The Lambda Orionis Ring

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Hustled outside in a biting wind last night to take advantage in a break in the clouds. I was after a quick colour starfield to blend with my Hα Angelfish from last year.

Just had time to grab a 30 second exposure with the Samyang 135mm f2 before the cloud rolled across. I then blended in some Hα data taken with the Samyang and a 50mm lens using Photoshop.

The Angelfish (Sh2-264) nebula is also known as the Lambda Orionis or Meissa ring, thought to be a supernova remnant. To see why you need to look at it in IR.

This image makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I had a quick go at blending my image with some data from the WISE space telescope to make the composite above. As I understand it, the Hα signal is a relatively thin skin on a much larger structure. Notice the boundary at top-right between the most defined section of Hα and the warm dust, which provides shade from the UV light from Meissa. Also notice how much brighter Betelgeuse is than Bellatrix in IR.

Hope you like the images, I enjoy matching up features in different wavelengths to better understand the structures of deep sky objects and the processes that shape them. I'm wondering if I can get hold of some radio data to show the full extent of the Orion molecular cloud.

As a bonus, here's the body of Orion in Hα RGB.

 

 

Edited February 13, 2021 by Knight of Clear Skies

[ollypenrice]

That's great. The professional data bringing in the dusty ring around the Ha is new to me. I'm often surprized by how rarely we see this wonderful and huge nebula in images. It has a fine structure and looks as if it's being swept by a westerly particle wind to my eye.

Olly

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks Olly. I guess it would be a challenging project for a mosaic while the brighter and more intricate knot at the top tends to get overlooked in favour of the other jewels around Orion. Much of the nebula is quite amorphous, possibly due to its age, and its structure shows up quite well at short focal lengths.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Here's a reprocessed version, which brings in Ha signal up to the Eastern rim of the ring, and with the dust from WISE showing more clearly.