Description

Orion’s Nebula, the brightest nebulae in the night sky. The Mayans dubbed it the cosmic fire of creation. As a stellar nursery where new stars are born, observations of the nebula have shown about 700 stars in various stages of formation, making it vital to stellar evolution research. 

This picture was taken using the Las Cumbres Observatory, through three separate filters which capture specific wavelengths of light, namely red, green and blue. The observatory's data pipeline, nicknamed BANZI, is used to process all the images taken. Using its ability, one can take a picture of space, and the observatory will streamline the stacking process to layer the many different fields required for a clear picture. Once these pictures are taken, they are edited in a star program after which the pictures are edited for each wavelength. They can then be stacked on top of each other to produce the colors seen. Finally, it's simply a matter of putting the picture into Photoshop to make the dim parts of the cloud brighter, the already bright parts not too much brighter to take over the picture, and to increase the sharpness of the clouds (to an extent).