The Horsehead Nebula (1,375 light years away) is a located at the left-most star of Orion’s belt. Orion has a lot of interest for the astrophotographer, mostly because of M42 – The Orion Nebula (which can be seen with the naked eye).
The Horsehead Nebula is a dark nebula, in that the dust is so thick that it blocks visible light. The structure around the Horsehead Nebula is lit by the bright star located below and left of the horse’s head in the image.
As the winter of 2020-2021 has been extremely cloudy, it is taking a lot of time to create this 3-panel mosaic of the Horsehead Nebula. So far, I’ve acquired enough images to process a monochrome image using the Hydrogen-Alpha filter. Eventually, I hope to capture more through Oxygen-III and Sulphur-II filters. But for now, I’m dealing with monochrome.
Imaging Details
- Workflow: Narrowband
- Mosaic: 3 panels (1×3)
- Hydrogen-Alpha Filter: 18*600 seconds
- Binning: 1×1
- Total Imaging Time: 9 hours
- Imaging Dates (2 nights):
- 1/4/2021
- 1/21/2021
