Horsehead Nebula

Horsehead Nebula: Certainly one of the most recognizable objects. It is a dark "dust" cloud of mostly hydrogen that is found near Alnitax, the Easternmost star in the belt of Orion. This is a monochrome image through an H-alpha filter that has been "colorized" by simply making it black and red instead of black and white. Although the horse can be seen easily in photographs, it is difficult to see visually through a telescope.

Other Catalogs: Barnard 33
Right Ascension: 5hr 41m
Declination: -02° 27.5'

Date: November 2009
Equipment:
Telescope: Meade 16" Schmidt Cassegrain with f6.3 reducer
Camera: SBIG ST-10XE
Guiding: Meade 5" refractor/DSI Pro/PHD

Exposure: 4x10 minutes 6nm H-alpha
Processing Notes: Capture in CCDSoft. Reduced in CCDStack. Combined in Sigma Beta. sqrt(x) stretch into Photoshop. Gaussian blur. Curves. Applied an artificial H-alpha (red) color in Photoshop using a Carboni action.
Scale: 1.01"/pixel

Links to images of this object on other sites:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081126.html

Additional Comments: Target of opportunity. However, the moon was getting close and you can see some reflection artifacts on the left side.

Views: 4756