Since the beginning of March we have had an improving weather prospect with the cloudy wet weather being left behind in January and February. Exactly two weeks ago, on the 3rd March, we had some clear skies to play with, all be it with a full moon that rose at 18:38 UT. Astronomical twilight on this date ended about 19:20 UT. The BAA Journal for February (Vol. 136, No. 1) had a nice picture of M78 and as I haven't imaged this object before I thought I would give it a go. I started observing with my Dwarf 3 at 19:39 UT and finished at 21:46 and this is what I obtained in 364x15s:-
This object is in Orion and lies to the north of Orion's belt. It is part of the Orion B Molecular Cloud Complex and it is illuminated by two hot B-type stars (see image below). You can see in this image how there is a dearth of stars running down the middle of the frame. This is because the cloud of dust and gas is blotting out the stars that are behind it. To produce the image auto parameters were used in the Dwarf and in the processing in Stellar Studio. The image has been binned x2 and the gain and the saturation increased slightly in Photoshop.
The areas of diffuse nebula around M78 are quite complex and the above image is a crop of the original unbinned image from the Dwarf 3. As well as M78 and its two illuminating B-type stars there are also NGC2071, NGC2067 and NGC 2064. Interestingly there is also a variable patch of illumination called McNeil's Nebula (marked) which at the moment cannot be seen. It was discovered in 2004 by Jay McNeil using a 3 inch telescope.
All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026
