Discovered by Harold Lower and his son Charles in 1939, SH2-261 or Lower’s Nebula is located in the outer regions of the Orion constellation, which is visually between Betelgeuse and Propus in Gemini, on the border of the galactic region between the Orion and Perseus arms of the Milky Way.  Mainly consisting of ionized hydrogen, it’s surprising that this interesting, quite large but faint object does not get more attention from astrophotographers, who are perhaps too busy collecting photons from the more famous objects of Orion elsewhere?  

Unusually clear skies were plentiful here at Fairvale Observatory during January, which allowed for some 17-hours integration time, albeit mostly accompanied by a waxing to full moon.  The data lends itself to various processing approaches and I played around for a long while with different combinations, in the end favouring an SHO + HOO blend as the main image (see top of the page) and am pleased with the very interesting result; for comparison other bassic versions (HOO & Ha) are shown below.

The aforesaid HII ionized gas is thought to be energised by the runaway bright star HD41997 situated at the centre, adjacent to a mysterious small bluish triangular object and a much fainter blue bubble, seen better elsewhere in higher resolution images.  Moreover, catalogued and encompassed within SH2-261 are LBN 862 and LBN 864 and several dark nebulae, which would also require greater magnification (focal length and aperture) to achieve finer detail.

Like most astronomers I’m routinely drawn towards Orion’s famous and rightly popular objects such as M42 the Great Orion Nebula, the Flame Nebula and B33 the Horsehead Nebula, M78 reflection nebula, Barnard’s Loop and other jewels found in and around the central region of the Orion constellation.  However, taking a wider perspective, literally and figuratively, the area contains other riches that are too easy to overlook and form good alternative imaging targets at this time of the year – time taken to identify such hidden treasures can be rewarding – in this case thanks to the Lower’s family.