Panning across the Orion Nebula

In this video we pan across a new image of the Orion Nebula from the Wide Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory. This provides a closer look at the many strange and fascinating structures hidden in this very detailed image. The image is a composite of several exposures taken through a total of five different filters. Light that passed through a red filter, as well as light from a filter that shows the glowing hydrogen gas, is coloured red. Light in the yellow–green part of the spectrum is coloured green, blue light is coloured blue and light that passed through an ultraviolet filter has been coloured purple. The exposure times were about 52 minutes through each filter.