Great Nebula of Orion (wide)

I’m selling just 50 prints of The Great Nebula of Orion (wide). Each one will arrive at your door with a certificate of authenticity and a brief explanation of why this image is so special. Postage is free to anywhere in the world and there are no additional taxes to pay. 

I’ve chosen to print the image on Giclée Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper which is considerably more expensive than regular paper but I think its worth it because the whites are whiter, the darks are darker and critically there are no reflections. There are 3 sizes to choose from each designed to fit into a common A0, A1 or A2 frame with a pleasing white border. Please note the frame is not included. 

Mrs Biscuit who is notoriously difficult to please and not into space stuff at all genuinely loves these prints. She says they are works of art. I love this image because we managed to resolve two exo-systems near Orion's core. As each tiny exo-system is roughly the size of our solar system this image gives me a humbling sense of the truly vast scale of our universe.  If you really want to soak up the scale then choose the absolutely massive A0 sized print😂 - there are only 10 being printed at this size!

This incredible image was captured in the South Downs and you can find out more about how the feat was achieved by watching my popular youtube  video "I saw another solar system"

The Great Nebula of Orion is just over 1000 light years. Its so bright I can even see it from London with a pair of binoculars. I expect you've seen it too. Its just below Orion's belt and is sometimes referred to as the sword of Orion. The bright core of Orion is lit up by a group of exceedingly massive and bright stars collectively known as the Trapezium because the four brightest (each ten times more massive than the sun) maps out the shape of a trapezium. The ultra violet radiation from these young super bright stars is eating away at the gas creating a cavity whose bright walls can be seen at the centre of this image. Incredibly at the edges of this cavity my high resolution data was able to resolve two young exo-systems (an exo-system is basically like our solar system but with another star rather than our sun (sol) at its centre).

The top exo-system appears as a disc silhouetted against Orion’s bright core. This disc of dust and gas is orbiting and obscuring the very young star at its centre. All being well the dust will eventually coagulate into planets.

The lower exo-system looks completely different. Here we are catching the glowing bubble of gas and dust which surrounds a young star whose nuclear furnace is yet to ignite. When the star ignites it will blow this bubble of dust and gas into space and become a fully grown up exo-system!

When I first saw this image I had a little bit of a wobbly moment because I realised that these tiny dots are roughly the size of our own solar system and my brain briefly grasped the vast scale of the Orion Nebula and how small our solar system is in comparison