Orion’s Thunderbolt

[Mikael_Joe]

A couple of days ago i finished my astrophotography of M42 (Orion Nebula) in narrowband.

I like this object because one can very clearly see how the different elements are seperated.
Here is how the colors were combined from:

Red: Sulfur II
Green: Hydrogen Alpha
Blue: Oxygen III

http://www.coolcat.dk/images/astro_sola ... ined_s.jpg

Larger image.
http://www.coolcat.dk/images/astro_sola ... mbined.jpg

[MrAmsterdam]

Hello Mikael,

These are beautiful pictures. What telescope do you use?
How did you identify matter with the fitting colors?

[Mikael_Joe]

I used a 80mm refractor and captured 3 images with each filter in S-II, Ha and O-III.

[mharratsc]

Absolutely gorgeous, Mikael... your color filtration really brought out the filamentary elements of this nebula!

More specifically- and color this a qualitative observation, I guess - you can see that the hydrogen is a pure layer enveloping a pure layer of oxygen within the concave surface of the hydrogen layer.

There does not seem to be any mixing of the two layers, leading me to believe that we're witness to a very large plasma double-layer.

Would you not assume that - if consensus (mainstream) understanding of cosmic plasma were correct, you would have these two elements equalizing charge and most likely bonding into either an OH radical or even H20?

I suppose I should ask (rather than presume)- if there were molecular constituents of the image, would they have been color-adjusted like the hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen were?