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A tall widefield view of Orion’s sword photographed from Lakeway, Texas with a ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: the red and white Orion Nebula with its small round companion M43 in the lower half, the faint Running Man Nebula and the star cluster NGC 1981 above it, and the bright star Iota Orionis below.

The Orion Nebula — Widefield

M42, M43 and the Running Man: the whole of Orion’s sword in one frame

  • TelescopeEva (ZWO Seestar S50 Pro)
  • Integration94 minutes
  • LocationLakeway, TX
  • SkyBortle 6
  • CapturedOct 28, 2026
  • PhotoKyle Eberly · © 2026
  • ProcessingOne pre-dawn session, 188 thirty-second exposures (1.6 hours) through the dual-band filter. The Pro’s frame covers about twice the sky of the S50 used for the close-up, about 1.2° by 2.3°, enough to run from the top of Orion’s sword to the bottom. The core is far brighter than the outer wings, so it was blended in from a gentler stretch so the Trapezium region doesn’t burn out while the faint gas around it still shows. Objects were confirmed by plate-solving the frame against the Gaia star catalog. North is up.

What you're looking at

To the naked eye, Orion’s sword is three fuzzy points of light hanging below the Belt. This frame holds all three: the star cluster NGC 1981 at the top, the Orion Nebula in the middle, and the bright star Iota Orionis at the bottom.

The Orion Nebula (M42) and its round companion M43 are the bright face of a much larger cloud, about 1,350 light-years away, where hundreds of stars are forming right now. Above them, the faint glow around a short row of stars is the Running Man Nebula (NGC 1977), gas and dust lit by hot young stars in the same complex.

The dark band between the Running Man and M42 is dust in front of the glow, not empty space. The close-up of M42 on this site shows the inner nebula in detail; this view shows where it sits in the sword.

The lesson

My first review scored this frame against the S50 close-up of M42 and called it the weaker picture: less detail in the core.

That was the wrong test. The close-up answers “what does the nebula look like?” This one answers “where does it sit?” Each instrument was built for a different question.

Before you judge a piece of work, check what it was built to do. A wide shot loses every contest scored for a close-up.

One photo. One lesson.

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Object data

Objects
M42 · M43 · NGC 1977 (Running Man) · NGC 1981 · Iota Orionis
Constellation
Orion
Type
Emission and reflection nebulae, open cluster
Distance
~1,350 light-years
Field
About 1.2° × 2.3° of sky, north up
Integration
188 × 30 s = 1.6 hours, dual-band, one session

More from the journal

The Horsehead Nebula photographed from Lakeway, Texas with a ZWO Seestar S50: a dark horse-head silhouette of dust rising from a black cloud against a glowing red curtain of hydrogen, with the bright belt star Alnitak at upper left and the small glowing nebula NGC 2023 in the dark cloud below it.
Barnard 33
The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) photographed from Lakeway, Texas with a ZWO Seestar S50: a thin pale shell around a bright central star, inside a larger cloud of red hydrogen, in a star field of white, blue and orange stars.
NGC 7635
The Fishhead Nebula (IC 1795) photographed from Lakeway, Texas with a ZWO Seestar S50: a rounded glow of red hydrogen at the center shaped like a fish’s head and crossed by a dark dust lane, with the bright knot NGC 896 just above it and fainter red wisps around it.
IC 1795