Every winter when Orion constellation is visible on the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere, I want to photograph it – regardless that I do it over and over again every year…!

However it’s also somewhat rewarding to compare the quality of the results over the years – fortunately my deep sky images are improving! 🙂

The image data in this photograph was takes during the late winter months of 2022 plus all of the winter 2023.
The total exposure time collected was a little over 40 hours (across 1120 image files), however not all are of the same quality due to various reasons (atmospheric turbulence, humidity, wind, light-pollution etc.) so only the best 164 image files were specifically chosen for the final result adding up to a total exposure time of 8 hours and 12 min.

Actually the same result should be achievable with only 4 hours and 40 minutes – if the sky and instruments had been perfect (but they never are anyways) 😀

Click the tag “Horsehead Nebula” if you want to see my evolution over the years.
You can read more about these nebulas in my photograph from 2020 here: Horsehead and Flame Nebulas 2020