Ad Astra Observatory

Some objects get all the press. When you are watching The Discovery Channel, and they put up a pretty nebula photo, it’s going to be Orion or sometimes The Eagle. There are not a huge number of large, bright nebulae out there, but there are definitely a few that deserve more press, but are overshadowed by their flashy neighbors.

NGC 2174 (with its embedded cluster, NGC 2175) is one of these. It’s fairly big, about the size of a full moon, fairly photogenic (check out the cute monkey!), and fairly close to other famous objects (IC 410, M1, and M42 are all within 15º or 20º). But, for some reason, it just doesn’t get any love. I found it when I was doing a survey of large objects, looking for stuff big enough to photograph, but I was only able to give it a quick treatment, several years ago.

This time, I tried for a bit more depth. The mount and I were still recovering from The Incident, so I was only able to do 5 minute subframes — I would love to do this again with 20m subframes. In any case, here it is, Orion’s “other other” nebula (has to take 3rd billing, behind M42 and B33).