The Horsehead Nebula

 Barnard 33, also known as the Horsehead Nebula, is a dark nebula in Orion’s constellation. The dark nebula, which forms the horsehead’s shape, is illuminated by the bright emission nebula IC 434.

The Horsehead was first discovered in 1888 by Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming. It is one of their most recognizable objects and is 1,374 light-years away from us.

The horse head’s dark area is caused by thick dust blocking the stars’ light behind it. There are other interesting targets near the Horse Head like NGC 2024 (The Flame Nebula) and a blue reflection nebula NGC 2023. The Flame Nebula is below Alnitak, which is the first star on Orion’s Belt. At a magnitude of 1.77, it is the brightest star in this image.

The constellation of Orion has several large stellar nurseries. The Horsehead and Flame Nebula are part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region.

The Flame Nebula has a cluster of several hundred newborn stars at its center. The Flame Nebula is a magnitude 10 and about 1350 light-years away.

This was a HAGB capture 12 x 5 mins Ha and 20 x 3 minutes GB. Processed in Pixinsight.

Horsehead Nebula

I would like to say the year would not be complete without an image of the beautiful Horsehead Nebula. This is one object that I just wish was half it's 1375 light years distance from us. It would truly be a spectacular sight filling the winter sky. I am hoping for some more clear sky to complete the HAGB project. So far we have 16 x 5 minute sub frames.

I am so incredibly pleased with my set up, a few people recently have posted issues with the ZWO EAF and I can honestly say thankfully I have had no issues with it achieving nothing short of perfect focus 100% of the time. So I thought I would do a serious crop of the horsehead and yes the Blur exterminator plugin has been run. It will certainly be after Christmas now for the remainder of the data for a HaGB colour image, Ha data looks great so far for 1 hour 20 minutes. 

My Bucket list.

Ok so lets talk about distance particularly the speed light. 

In a vacuum,  we know that light travels at 670,616,629 mph. So If a little context is needed light from the moon takes 1.3 seconds to arrive at our eyes, Saturn is 1.3 light hours away a measly 0.0001505453985955772 light years distant. So what is a light year?

quite simply the distance light travels in a year 5,878,625,370,000 that's nearly 5.9 Trillion miles. Ok so back to the point I wanted to make IC434 or the Horsehead nebula is an immense cloud of thick dust obscuring star birth inside it and in galactic terms the Horsehead is an insignificant 3.5 light years in diameter but when you compare that against our solar system and our distance to Saturn it would be a huge two hundred and twenty one thousand three hundred and forty four (221,344) times the distance. 

If you ever needed reminding SPACE IS BIG.

My image was captured 2 nights ago at my home observatory with about 4 hours of data. Over the years I have taken many images of this target and I was lucky enough back in April of 2015 to appear in an episode of the Sky at night celebrating Hubble's 25 year Anniversary. One ticked off my bucket list anyway.

Stack of 40x 3 minute Ha frames.

My new laptop has amazing processing power, attempted several times previously to process a starnet++ starless image, it failed several times, introduce Mr Dell and it processes a colour starless image in less than 2 minutes, a chunk of star reduction and hey presto a lovely update to mt=y first process.

The Horsehead Nebula

The winter months were not great from my location, that and the bloody tree facing due south, I only managed just over an hour on this iconic target, it beats too the image I took when featured on the Sky At Night Programme when Pete Lawrence visited our Society Breckland Astronmoical Society to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Hubble. New image at top.  I know heavily cropped but an amazing difference in camera technology and processing technique.

The sky at Night.

I can finally tick off appearing on The sky at night tv programme from my bucket list. I was lucky enough to have my image of the Horsehead nebula appear with myself and Pete Lawrence on the programme. The interview involved 2 pieces to camera with a number of questions asked. Final edit and broadcast was reduced to about 30 seconds. As mentioned before this is the second time the team has visited Breckland AS. An open invite was given to return if we can offer anymore future programmes.

Reprocessed B33

I started again from scratch and had a complete reprocess of the Horsehead nebula. Combined now will calibration frames it is certainly a good deal cleaner. Plus I believe practice makes perfect and I am getting more adept at being more subtle with the techniques of Photoshop, less each time is certainly more!. I have also discovered it is to be turned into A3 size and printed very soon, cant wait to see it.

As mentioned previously there was a bright moon not far away at the time of capture.

I am happy with the dusty stuff captured. One thing I have noticed Blogspot appears to brighten the images a fraction from my original.

The Horsehead Nebula.

With a magnitude -11.8 moon causing a little concern. I thought I would have a play. I have imaged the Horsehead a few times before so I was not banking on a perfect image. I must admit though I am again impressed with the sensitivity of the camera and scope. I captured 3 hours in 20 minute sub frames.

 Processed in photoshop only using levels & curves. An unsharp mask & high pass filter has done wonders on the dusty stuff & blended using layer masks. A subtle saturationboost and noise filter applied to complete.

B33 Dark Nebula. The Horsehead.

I have been using Maxim to calibrate the files as I was struggling with Pixinsight batch preprocessing. I am very pleased with the detail in the flame nebula.

 

2 hours worth of data here. still not happy with the gradient in the centre.

Horsehead Nebula

Stargazing Live from my own back garden this evening. My telescope & camera pointing towards the heavens to image the amazing Horsehead Nebula.

The red glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust, although the lower part of the Horsehead's neck casts a shadow to the left. Streams of gas leaving the nebula are funneled by a strong magnetic field. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula's base are young stars just in the process of forming.

1 hour only of exposure Approx 40 mins @ Iso 3200 and 20 Mins @Iso 1600 using 2 minute guided sub frames. My collection of darks are proving useful with a dark frame subtraction. DDP and levels adjustment and aquisition provided from images plus and Deep sky stacker combining the frames.