M43

M43 - Emission Nebula in Orion

The Orion Nebula, M42, is one of the classic showpieces of the night sky, but people often don't realize that there's another Messier object, M43, in the field that's beautiful on its own. While working on my recent mosaic of the region I decided that M43 deserved some love, too, so here it is. I cropped this field from the mosaic and tweaked a few things.

Equipment:

PlaneWave CDK17 17" f/6.8 Astrograph

10Micron GM4000 mount

Moravian C3-61000 Pro CMOS Camera

Total exposure: RGB 2 hours

Deep Space Remote Observatories - South at ObsTech El Sauce Observatory in Chile

November, December 2025

Data acquisition by Bob Fera and Steve Mandel

Image processing by Bob Fera