M42, the Great Orion Nebula is the brightest Nebula visible in the northern sky. Located in the splendid winter constellation it is visible even to the unaided eye. But the color which is seen in long exposure photographs like the one above, are only very faintly seen in big amateur telescopes. The blue reflection nebula in the upper part of the image is NGC1977 - some people call it the running man nebula...

Missing an autoguider I had to guide this image by hand, using a 70mm f/10 guidescope. (Lidlscope) With the dual axis hand controller still out for repair, I had to apply the (seldom) declinatin corrections manually. I "scanned" the negative with a Nikon Coolpix 950 Camera, a Nikon ES-1 slide copying adaptor and a small Cabin Light Panel (CL-5000P)