M78 is a reflection nebula in Orion and part of the enormous Orion nebula complex. It is lit by the two 10th magnitude stars that are the two bright objects towards the top of the nebula. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780 and Messier added it to his catalogue on 17th of December that year. It is an area of active star formation and contains at least 17 Herbig-Haro objects (see footnote). It is about 1,600 light years away and 4 light years across.
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This is my first attempt at this nebula. Although its magnitude is 8.0, its surface brightness is only 12.0, so it is a faint object, difficult in my light-polluted skies. Because it is a reflection nebula, its colour is similar to that of the stars within it and it does not have sharp emission lines that enable me to cut out so much stray light by using narrow-band filters. Move your mouse over the image to see the luminance image without colour. The faint nebulosity curving around M78 to the north-east (upper-right) is NGC 2067. |
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| Date and Time | 8th January 2011 22:52 to 23:53 UT | Camera | Starlight Xpress MX716 | Telescope | ETX125 with 0.33 focal reducer (focal length 630 mm) and Astronomik RGB and CLS filters | Capture | Star_mx7. 120 sec exposure 5 frames for each of RGB and 10 frames for Luminance | Processing | RegiStax. Individual exposures aligned, stacked and the histograms stretched to 0-150. The 4 resulting frames were realigned and output as BMP files. These were then combined in Photoshop as an LRGB image. Finally the gamma was increased to 1.2 and the image trimmed in PhotoImpact. |
Footnote:
Herbig-Haro objects are jets of matter ejected from newly formed stars for a few thousand years after they ignite. Thus they are indicative of very young stars and hence a label of a stellar nursery.
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