My first look this season at the Great Orion nebula. This cradle of creation is giving birth to thousands of new stars and planetary systems, right in front of our modern eyes now that we have the tools to see them. With this photo I also tried to demonstrate how far the equipment and processing techniques have come in recent years. This is just 15 minutes of data with short 15 second exposures in natural colors as our eyes would see them were they sensitive enough, all with a telescope and imaging system that costs about $5,000. Not “cheap” by any means, but also amazing for a tool that scientists just a few decades ago would have paid billions to have access to, and now available to anyone to buy off the shelf.
What an amazing opportunity we have to understand our sky at a whole new level!
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