De Mairan's Nebula M43 (NGC 1982), as seen with the 4-meter Mayall
telescope of Kitt Peak National Observatory. This color film image
was obtained by Bill Schoening on October 1, 1973, on Kodak Ektachrome.
The M43 image shown here was cropped from a
larger image of M42 and M43.
It is shown here oriented with South up, East right.
Note considerable detail in this gorgeous color image.
Credit: Bill Schoening/NOAO/AURA/NSF
KPNO image of M43. Cropped from an older and wider-field image of M42 and M43. North is up, East is left in this image.
This excellent image of M43 shows well the dark lane separating it from its
larger neighbor, M42, the Orion Nebula. It was
taken with the KPNO 0.9-meter telescope on the night of December 20th 2002 UT.
The central star is a young irregular variable designated NU Orionis or
HD 37061. As in many deep images, this star looks elliptical here, presumably
due to the material surrounding it (at least, we hope that's the explanation).
Credit: N.A. Sharp/NOAO/AURA/NSF
M43 from Greg Bothun's collection
Infrared image of M43, De Mairan's Nebula. This image was taken from the 2MASS Atlas images, obtained with the 2MASS IR telescopes in Arizona and Chile. It was cropped from a larger image of the whole Orion Nebula, M42/M43. Exposure time was only 10 minutes.
A large number of faint stars, not visible in the visible light images above, can be seen in this infrared light image, scattered over the nebula M43, and in particular the region to the lower left [SW], toward the dark dust band separating M43 from M42. Very probably, they have formed recently from the surrounding nebulous matter.
As all IR images it is a false-color image, in this case, color-coded for IR wavelengths bands, with red assigned to the coolest, longest wavelength and farthest IR radiation, blue to the warmest, shortest wavelength and nearest (to visible light) IR.
Last Modification: August 11, 2000