European Southern Observatory

Orion Cluster 

  

Orion Cluster (The Trapezium) as imaged through
 my telescope in the back garden

Quite pleased with myself having found out how to download raw data from the European Southern Observatory. I then used Fits Liberator and Photoshop to create a simple LRGB image of the Orion Nebula. The data is from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) which is  a focal reducer-type camera which is permanently mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the 2.2m MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla.

The Trapezium as seen by one of ESO's large telescopes in Chile

My version from my back garden  -"what it lacks in clarity I more than make up with enthusiasm". You can see four of the Trapezium stars and the  immediate area of the molecular hydrogen cloud illuminated by them.




I created the image below from ESO data selecting a palette of colours that best reflects the muted colour you see through the eyepiece of a telescope.