This image has a story. For me, the most exciting target in the sky is the horsehead nebula IC434. This is THE one target, that got me into astro photography. I was a kid, when there was a poster in my school for an event of the local astronomy club (which sadly isn't anymore). It showed a closeup of the head's dark cloud and I was truely amazed by the details in the red glowing nebula. At that time, I must have been about 14 or 15 years old. I really loved this image and I began dreaming of taking such beautiful images myself.

Of course, I had no clue about the technical side of astro photography and I expected to need a huge telescope that is outside my reach. Then came Hale Bopp and I took my first images with my fathers analog film camera (Praktica PLC2 with Carl Zeiss Pancolar 1,8/50).

Imagine my surprise, when I realized about two years ago that the Horsehead could be imaged with a small scope and a camera. That is one target I have to shoot myself. There is only one problem. At my place, I could only see the Western part of the sky and in the south, I have a lot of trees that limit my view again. So Orions belt was nearly always behind some tree tops. That's sad.

To improve my image outcome, I set up my small refractor next to my permanent setup and the place I've chosen has a slightly better view to the southern part of the sky. By chance, from that location Orions belt was moving just above the trees I'm talking about. But there was a problem. The moon was about 50% and it was really close to Orion. Nevertheless, I had to try to get something. From the beginning of the night, I should have a clear view to my target for about 2 1/2 hours. This may be the last chance for this year, to get any image. So I gave it a try without expecting anything and there is no room for problems...

Of course, there was a problem. A Windows update was causing some issues and I lost about half an hour to solve this. I could not connect remotely to my imaging computer anymore. Luckily, I had such problems before and was prepared to solve them quickly. But Now, there should be only two hours left.

Looking at the single frames taken in the moonlight was a bit dissappointing. Never may I be able to get something out of this data. That's how it must feel like if you are in a bortle 8 or 9 area. But I stacked the images to see where I may get to. I was surprised, that it may be possible to process the image properly. So I did and this is the result of that evening that I spend with my dream target.

Others may be bored by the huge amount of images of this region. But I am not. This is the first astro image I realized and now I got it done by my own "hands". That is really amazing. Who would've thought this about 30 years ago?

The next two weeks, the moon will not allow more data. Then, Orion will not be in my sight anymore. But I made the plan to get more images in the next season to get a proper result. This one is pretty noisy and lacks some details in the dark part of the image. But I don't care. It is my own image of the amazing Horsehead nebula...




One short word about processing. I have to cheat a bit, because there was a huge flare from a nearby star that is not visible in the image. My skills are not great and the only way for me to get rid of it was to "Photoshop it away" with the clone stamp tool. It is only a small part of the image, but the stars there are not real anymore. Sorry about that...