IC434 / NGC 2024 (ORI) Horsehead and flame - A flaming horse, glimpsing the space between the stars
What’s in the picture(s)
IC434 / B33 ORI Horsehead Nebula -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_NebulaQuote “IC434 is a bright
emission nebula in the constellation
Orion. It was discovered on February 1, 1786 by
William Herschel. The
Horsehead Nebula is a
dark nebula silhouetted against it.
The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33) is a small
dark nebula in the constellation
Orion. It is located just to the south of
Alnitak, the easternmost star of
Orion's Belt, and is part of the much larger
Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. It appears within the southern region of the dense dust cloud known as Lynds 1630, along the edge of the much larger, active star-forming
H II region called
IC 434.
The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1,375
light-years from Earth. It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of its resemblance to a
horse's head”
The Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277, is an
emission nebula in the constellation
Orion. It is about 900 to 1,500
light-years away.
The bright star
Alnitak (ζ Ori), the easternmost star in the
Belt of Orion, shines energetic
ultraviolet light into the Flame and this knocks electrons away from the
great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there. Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionized hydrogen recombine”
What was the experience
This data was collected in January, but I only managed to find time now, nearly 3 months later, to process it, the data consisting of different exposure times, showing a glimpse of the faint background nebulosity.
Since my original first pass, I’ve improved on my processing, and I even tried to go beyond the boundaries of what I know so far, combining different exposure times through gradient composition, splitting the channels, starless processing, trying to preserve the faint nebulosity as much as possible, smoothing the grainy background, sharpening the structures, and bringing back the stars into the image. Alnitak and Alnilam remain overwhelming, my ‘star-processing’ still requires another quality-step 🙄😉😊
I had wanted to capture more data to improve the faint background nebulosity, only a large 4 hours captured so far, but the clouds and earth’s rotation around the sun are pushing this desire to later this year.
The framing, with RA and Dec as always aligned to X and Y, is skewed to the side, attempting to show more of the outflow of the nebula … and also because … I have a cunning plan 😉 … more on that later … hopefully 🤞😎
How it was done
Scope: TS94 APO (FL 414mm)
Mount: EQ6-R Pro
Camera: ASI2600MC Pro
Photons: Photons: 20220308-0310 L-Enhance 180s 87x 4:21
Processing: PixInsight (Mac)
What have I learned from this
In my revision of M42 (
https://astrob.in/tfzoj6/B/), I focused on learning the handling of different exposure times. This time I focused on improving how to smoothen and sharpen background and structures, through MultiScaleLineairTransformation, as an extra image-enhancements next to HDR and LocalHistogram, etc … The multitude of processing steps, and processing try-outs are pushing the hours spent on each image … Luckily the stars will still here for a while 🤩😎
Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭
Follow me @astrowaut
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