The Sword of Orion

Orion's "sword" dangles from his belt and contains the famous Orion Nebula M42, the little comma-shaped outlier M43, and the nearby fainter nebula NGC 1975. This is a wide field view spanning about 2 degrees vertically.

This image was made with my 92mm refractor from Scout Key in Florida, home of the Winter Star Party. It's a combination of exposures ranging from a few seconds to five minutes, combined and edited to preserve the best detail in every part of the nebula, which has a very large range of brightnesses.