Orion - Upside Down is the topic of Part #1 of our image presentation, where we want to share the results from our astrophotography-trip to the Hacienda Los Andes in Chile. Upside Down is also the general subject for the 2015 journey to Chile. You want to know why? Well, on the northern hemisphere we have the very famous winter constellation Orion and if we travel to the southern hemisphere Orion appears upside down to us.

The constellation Orion lies in the northern sky, on the celestial equator. It is one of the brightest and best known constellations in the night sky. It contains two of the ten brightest stars in the sky - Rigel (Beta Orionis) and Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis).

Within the constellation Orion we can find three nebulae which are at least as famous as the constellation itself. The first one is the Orion Nebula (M 42), the second one is called Running Man (NGC 1973, NGC 1975 and NGC 1977) and the third one is the well known Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33), which is one of the most easily identifiable nebulae in the sky.

South of the Orion Nebula you can find the bright blue reflection nebula NGC 1999. At the edge of the Orion molecular cloud complex some 1,500 light-years distant, NGC 1999 is illuminated by the embedded variable star V380 Orionis. In the center of the blue reflection nebula you can see a dark T-shape which looks like a keyhole. Therefore NGC 1999 is also known as the Keyhole Nebula. This dark keyhole was assumed to be an obscuring dust cloud seen in front of the bright reflection nebula. But recent infrared images indicate that the shape is likely a real hole blown through the nebula itself by energetic young stars.

Because of the weather conditions which caused bad seeing, sometimes it was only possible to use short focal lenses. During this times we did a lot of startrail images and other weird stuff ;-) But not only the weather tried to disturb our astrophotography plans, we also had to struggle with some earthquakes during our stay. So we want to show you a very special image, where you can see what it looks like, when an earthquake occurs during an active exposure.

This time Justin Kabaus joined the CEDIC Team for the trip to Chile. Justin is one of the best timelapse photographers in Austria. Below you can watch one of his amazing timelapse videos which was captured during one of the cloudy nights.