There are many wonders hiding in the cosmos, but not all of them are visible to the naked eye. Certainly, we can admire the constellation that can perhaps unanimously be considered the most beautiful in the sky: Orion. However, the gems it conceals are many more than those that appear at first glance.
Let us begin calmly. The constellation Orion contains some of the most fascinating stars in the winter sky, such as Betelgeuse and Rigel, not to mention the three stars of the famous belt: Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. The shape of the asterism is reminiscent of the giant Orion who, too proud, boasted that he was so skilled that he could kill any beast. To punish him, the goddess Gaea (Earth) sent a scorpion to sting him.
But what escapes the eyes, even if not the sensor of a suitably modified camera, are the beautiful nebulae that surround the constellation and are also distributed along the winter Milky Way. These nebulae arise from clusters of hydrogen clouds that, excited by the energy of nearby stars, emit a reddish light known as H-alpha (the first stage of hydrogen excitation).
The constellation also offers other celestial objects of great interest, such as the star clusters M46, M48 and M41, to name but a few. Moreover, a little-known fact is that Orion hosts one of the richest clusters of very hot stars, characterised by their intense blue colour.
All this wonder was captured above the volcano Etna, under a sky in which the Milky Way aligns, creating a scene of extraordinary beauty.
Canon 6dmod, Sigma 24-35mm, f/2.8
Landscape: 3 x8 0 sec, f/2.8, iso 800 + 1 iso 400
Sky: 25 x 80 sec, f/2.8, iso 800 + flat
H-alpha: 11 x 160s, f/2.8, iso 3200 +flat & dark