Orion Revealed

A simulated view of the winter constellation Orion to show the difference that observing from a dark site makes, and what long exposure photography can reveal.

From town only the seven brightest stars are visible through the murk of light pollution - if you see more in the left hand pane then your screen, like mine, could probably do with a clean. From a truly dark site a plethora of stars pop into view and the Orion Nebula is clearly visible at lower middle. The long exposure reveals thousands of stars, several nebulae and dust lanes in the Milky Way.

Another advantage of a video like this is that it gives a better sense of the relative brightness between objects. Deep images of the sky are both revealing and subtly misleading - due to the limitations of human vision objects of greatly differing luminosity must be presented at a similar level. With the video the brighter objects appear first.

The source image was taken using a 50mm lens on a modded Canon 1100D camera, with a total exposure time of roughly 75 minutes.