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A tall, unfinished four-panel mosaic of Orion photographed from Lakeway, Texas with a ZWO Seestar S50 Pro, north up: a tilted panel at upper left holds the Flame Nebula, the bright star Alnitak and the dark Horsehead against a red curtain of hydrogen; a dim star field fills the middle; the Running Man Nebula and the bright Orion Nebula sit at lower right. Black areas mark sky not yet photographed, including a notch beside the Horsehead panel.

Orion — from the Horsehead to the Sword

A living entry: four panels so far, with the gaps showing where the next nights go

  • TelescopeEva (ZWO Seestar S50 Pro)
  • Integration469 minutes
  • LocationLakeway, TX
  • SkyBortle 6
  • CapturedNov 3, 2026
  • PhotoKyle Eberly · © 2026
  • ProcessingFour panels from three nights, all on the S50 Pro through the dual-band filter in thirty-second exposures: the Horsehead and Flame widefield (2.7 hours), the Orion Nebula widefield (1.6 hours), and two new panels between them, shot by the telescope robot on the night of November 3 (2.1 and 1.4 hours). Each panel was plate-solved against the Gaia star catalog and warped onto one canvas, north up. This is a first draft, published as it stands. The black notch beside the Horsehead panel is sky no panel has covered yet, the seam around the Orion Nebula is where a deeper panel meets a shallower one, and the nebula’s core is overexposed. A fill panel for the notch and a deeper Orion Nebula panel to even out the seam are scheduled; the core will be re-blended from a gentler stretch, as in the single-frame widefield.

What you're looking at

This frame runs about five degrees, ten full moons, from Orion’s Belt down into his sword. At the top is Alnitak, the eastern star of the Belt, with the Flame Nebula beside it and the Horsehead, a cold dust cloud seen in silhouette against glowing hydrogen.

At the bottom is the Orion Nebula, about 1,350 light-years away, the nearest large region of new stars to Earth. The fainter glow just above it is the Running Man Nebula.

The Horsehead and the Orion Nebula are pieces of one structure, the Orion molecular cloud complex, a reservoir of gas and dust far larger than this frame. The dim red haze in the middle panels is faint hydrogen glow from that cloud, lit by the hot young stars of the Belt and the sword.

The lesson

Two of these four panels were shot in the ten days before this mosaic existed, as single pictures with their own pages. They turned out to be the corners of something bigger.

It’s published with the gaps showing on purpose. A draft with visible holes tells the next night exactly where to point. A finished-looking picture that hides them doesn’t.

One photo. One lesson.

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Object data

Objects
B33 (Horsehead) · NGC 2024 (Flame) · Alnitak (ζ Ori) · NGC 1977 (Running Man) · M42 · M43
Constellation
Orion
Panels
4 so far: Horsehead and Flame, two robot-shot bridge panels, Orion Nebula widefield
Total integration
469 minutes (7.8 hours) over three nights
Field
About 3.3° × 5.4° of sky, north up
Placement
Each panel plate-solved against the Gaia DR3 star catalog

More from the journal

A widefield view in Orion photographed from Lakeway, Texas with a ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: the Flame Nebula glowing orange-red at left with dark dust lanes through it, the bright star Alnitak above center, and the dark Horsehead silhouette against a red curtain of hydrogen at right.
The Horsehead and the Flame
The Horsehead Nebula photographed from Lakeway, Texas with a ZWO Seestar S50: a dark horse-head silhouette of dust rising from a black cloud against a glowing red curtain of hydrogen, with the bright belt star Alnitak at upper left and the small glowing nebula NGC 2023 in the dark cloud below it.
Barnard 33
The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) photographed from Lakeway, Texas with a ZWO Seestar S50: a thin pale shell around a bright central star, inside a larger cloud of red hydrogen, in a star field of white, blue and orange stars.
NGC 7635