Often overshadowed by the Great Orion Nebula just to the south, this detached portion of the same nebular complex bears notice in its own spectacular way. Composed of both gas and dust, the various shades of reds and browns form a very complex object. Especially notice the proliferation of dim red stars to the left of the nebula, these are members of a loose star cluster in this region dimmed and greatly reddened by extinction from the non illuminated parts of the same nebula. Infrared images of this area reveal hundreds of cluster members buried in the dusty veil.

This image was made by combining 60 one minute exposure images from the R, G, and B channels to form a "synthetic luminance" image suitable for deconvolution and processing. This was combined with the normal RGB to produce the above image, without the very bright central star from burning out the entire image.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG ST7E w/Enhanced Cooling
Exposure:  LRGB = 20:20:20:20 
Filters:  RGB Tricolor
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FMHW = 2.1 arcsec, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  0 C
CCD Temperature:  -35 C
Processing:  Maxim DL, Photoshop, AIP4WIN, PW Pro.