M42 The Orion Nebula

Orion, the hunter dominates the winter sky. M42 is a bright nebula which forms part of the sword hanging from orions belt. With binoculars or a telescope this appears as a white smudge or (fuzzy) area. It is only through long exposure photography that the colours appear as our eyes are not sensitive enough to pick them up. This is one of my first attempts and was taken with my Canon 50d through my skywatcher 200p telescope,taking exposures up to 5 minutes in length (around 30 exposures in total. They are then stacked togethor and processed in photoshop to give this result. These shots where manually guided through my 70mm scope piggybacked on the skywatcher (hard work) I hope to improve on this image in the future.