I was photographing the nebulas in Orion tonight. I'm quite pleased with the result though it's pretty difficult to optimise to get the best out of each of the Nebulas...

From top left to bottom right you can see the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024), then the Horsehead Nebula, which is also known as Barnard 33 (both of these named for obvious reasons!). The star between them by the way, is Alnitak, which is farthest west on Orion's Belt. Further down and to the right is the small Running Man Nebula (NGC 1973) and then the famous Great Orion Nebula (M42).

The Orion Nebula is about 1250 light years away from Earth and about 24 light years across. It is a star forming region where new stars are being born and their light is lighting up the surrounding dust and gas. Large telescopes have photographed protoplanetary disks which are planet forming regions around these new stars. I wonder what the distant future holds for those planets?

Here is a closer crop of the Flame & Horsehead with slightly different processing.