Hi all, this is the only image I've been able to take during our cloudy November, December and January. I logged about 35 hours but only 21 hours are usable and I knew this as I was taking them because I'd take advantage of every clear sky that came along, but many times there were passing clouds or high haze that just ruined a large percentage of the images. But I was able to cobble one together. This is an object I've been wanting to image again for some time but given the weather in Vermont winters, it's hard. This year I was determined!
Although William Henry Pickering was official credited with its discovery in 1889, the Horsehead Nebula was first recorded on a photographic plate taken by Williamina Paton Fleming at the Harvard College Observatory in 1888. The first published description of the Horsehead Nebula was given by E. E. Barnard in 1913, and it was first cataloged by him in 1919.
Barnard 33 is the most interesting feature of a huge region of gas and dust situated 1,600 light years away in the constellation Orion. It is a dark globule of dust and non-luminous gas, obscuring the light coming from the moderately bright nebula IC 434 behind it. The red glow of IC 434 originates from ionized hydrogen gas. The bright, bluish reflection nebula near the Horsehead is NGC 2023.
The underside of the "neck" of the Horsehead is especially dark, and actually casts a shadow on the field below the "muzzle". The entire region is illuminated by the bright OB star Sigma Orionis, which is also responsible for ionizing the emission nebula IC 434. The much brighter Zeta Orionis is a foreground star, not related to the nebulosity. Sky Safari pro 6
I shot this with a TEC140 scope with AP QTCC reducer/corrector to bring the scope to F5. The camera is an ASI6200 mono with Chroma filters. I shot the image in an RGB+Ha palette and did not do any color modification or saturation as the colors seemed perfect after Pixinsight SPCC.
Clear Skies,
Terri
Just beautiful work. November! One of my favorite object and the first one my son and I captured in 2004 with his C-11.
