M42 and the Running Man Nebula

On the same evening that I was taking more pictures of the comet C/2022 E3 I decided to have a quick look at M42 in Orion as it was nicely placed. As I was using my Celestron 102SLT I wanted to do the wide shot which included the Running Man Nebula which lies to the north of M42. I thought I had captured this image since I came down to Norfolk but it seems that I haven't and the last time I attempted this was in 2006 when I was using a 200mm lens in Yorkshire. This time I managed 20x30s at ISO3200 and then I combined them in DeepSkyStacker using auto adaptive weighted average, binned the final image x2 and modified it using levels in Photoshop. This was the result (you can click on any of the images to see an enlarged version):-

I was pleased with the result. The stars have come out quite sharp and there is plenty of detail in the nebulae. M42 is the pink fan shaped nebula to the right with its four bright stars of the Trapezium in its centre. Below and very close to M42 is another nebula designated by Messier and this is M43. It is seen as an almost circular nebula, with a central star, cut off from M42 by a dark lane of dust and gas. The Running Man Nebula, as it is called, is to the left of the image and appears as a faint blueish nebula with dark lanes running through it. I have reproduced a larger version of it here where I have labelled the contributing parts to it:-

With this orientation the dark lanes that lie in this reflection nebula do really look like a man with his legs splayed as if running.

To compare these images with my previous attempts here is an image that I took from 2006 with a 200mm focal length lens:-

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2023