Orion — Belt and Sword

T80 · 16 frames · 44 min · 2026-11-04

Belt and sword in one 10°-wide frame from a 130 mm lens: the Orion Nebula (M42) and Running Man in the sword, the Flame and Horsehead beside Alnitak in the belt. Hydrogen-alpha light is blended into the red channel.

Telescope

StellarDock T80 · 130 mm f/2.8 lens · mono + filters

Where

Entre Encinas y Estrellas, Spain

Exposure

16 frames · 44 min · 1 session

Filters

Blue × 4, Green × 4, Hydrogen-Alpha × 4, Red × 4

Colour

R=Red G=Green B=Blue (visible filters by wavelength)

Star FWHM

2.0 px

Stacked

2026-11-04

Full size

4165 × 6236 px · 5.2 MB JPEG

Conditions

Steady through the twelve colour frames; over the four closing Hα frames transparency fell 19 % with no halo growth round the belt stars and no rise in the sky floor, which points to thin cloud rather than dew or fog (weather model: 0 % cloud, 74 % humidity, air 4 °C above the dew point). The soft glow across the field is the Orion molecular cloud itself, brought up by the stretch.

• Hα detail · 3.9 MB
• M42 close-up, RGB only, log stretch (1.5°) · 266 KB
• Whole field: M42 held down 5x, the other nebulae from the Hα stack (alternative render) · 8.3 MB