- The bright orange star Betelgeuse (pronounced beetle-juice). This is a dying star, a red giant, if this star were at the center of our solar system, its outer edges would extend to saturn
- The three bright blue stars in a row making up Orion's belt
- The left (eastern) most star in Orion's belt, alnitak, is surrounded by two red nebulous complexes, the famous horsehead nebula and the not so famous flame nebula
- Below the three stars in Orion's belt are the three "stars" making up orion's sword. To the naked eye, the center of these three stars appears as a diffuse cloud instead of a star, that's because you're looking at one of the only naked eye visible nebulas in the galaxy, the Great Orion Nebula. In this picture, it's a bright pink patch, but under a telescope, it actually appears as a greenish cloud. This is the birthplace (a star nursery if you will) of thousands of new stars.
- To the left (east) of Orion's belt and sword is a huge red crescent, that's called Barnard's loop and is all that's left of a several thousand year old supernova (exploding star). The reddish hue is generated by ionized hydrogen, also known as hydrogen alpha.
- Finally, in the lower right hand corner of this photo is Orion's front foot, the blue star rigel.
Photographic details, two exposures, 10 and 15 minutes digitally combined, guided with a GM-8 losmandy mount, 50mm lens set at f/4, Olympus OM-1 (circa 1970) all shot on Kodak Royal Gold 200.
