Running Man Nebula 2/8/25
The initial forecast for last night was looking pretty decent for getting some more astrophotography shots. I wanted to try and get a shot of the Running Man Nebula (NGC1977). I’ve photographed it before, but only in the context of photographing the larger Orion Nebula which is right next to it. Orion is such a spectacular nebula, the poor Running Man barely gets noticed in the photo. For orientation, the Orion Nebula and the Running Man Nebula can be found in Orion’s sword in the Orion Constellation.
Weather conditions didn’t start out very conducive to astrophotography - it was a whole lot more windy than originally forecast, gusting to 20mph on my roof where I was set up. With long exposure, deep space shots, if you just look at the camera funny you’ll get some vibration artifacts, so a 20mph was a no-go. I decided instead of taking my “dark frame” calibration shots at the end of my shooting session, which is what I normally do, I’d start with the dark frames and hope that the wind eventually died down.
I lucked out and the wind did indeed die down. Of course in my planning I neglected to look where the moon was, and it happened to be a bit closer than I would’ve liked to my target. But I figured at that point, it couldn’t hurt to at least try. After my first test shot, the Orion Nebula was partially in frame, and looking at it I thought “Ooooohhhh that is just so gorgeous, maybe I should just shoot that.” But I stuck to my plan and continued with Running Man. I didn’t get as many shots as I had originally planned due to the earlier wind. And the background moonlight made processing a tad more tricky. But given all of that, it came out better than I was expecting.
