Another imaging project I’ve been chipping away at over the last few months (on the very occasional clear night), is this deep sky image of the Horsehead and Flame Nebula in the constellation of Orion.
The Horsehead Nebula (IC 434) is a very famous dark nebula alongside the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) in closest line of sight to Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion’s belt (AKA “The Pot”).
Alnitak is the brightest foreground star in the image, situated above the Flame nebula.
The Horsehead itself is a dark region of dense interstellar dust and gas, in which active star formation is taking place.
The opaque dust cloud casts a silhouette likened to the shape of a horse’s head which stands out in front of a vast glowing region of ionized Hydrogen (Ha), the vibrant red glow in the image background.
The red glowing Hydrogen is thought to be ionized by the star Sigma Orionis, the bright star near the top of the image.
The horsehead is located around 1500 light years from earth.
Flame nebula is marginally closer at a distance of around 1300 light years from earth.
It is also an interstellar cloud, rich in Hydrogen, with clearly visible filaments of dust creating flame like textures.
Flame nebula is thought to be illuminated by the ionizing rays of a cluster of young stars near the center of the complex.
The image is compiled using 4 hours of one-shot RGB data & 3 hours of narrowband, plus dark, flat & bias frames.
Captured using HEQ5, WO-GT81, Canon 60D full spectrum mod, ASIAIR+, Optolong L’Enhance & Astronomik UV/IR cut filters.
Preprocessing was done in Deep Sky Stacker.
Post processing was done in Adobe Photoshop.
I’ve included the starless version as well.
Enjoy!
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