Flame and Horsehead nebulas (Victor Van Puyenbroeck)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: Horsehead nebula · IC 431 · IC 432 · IC 434 · IC 435 · NGC 2023 · NGC 2024 · The star Alnitak (ζOri) · The star σOri

Flame and Horsehead nebulas, Victor Van Puyenbroeck

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Flame and Horsehead nebulas

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Flame and Horsehead nebulas

After imaging with the Orion ST-80 telescope for almost a year, I finally replaced it with a TS 80 mm triplet APO and matching focal reducer/field flattener. It's great to revisit some of the objects I've shot in the past with this well corrected telescope. Still going unguided though, so I'll stick to 60 sec subs.

This was shot with an unmodified camera, and I was surprised with the amount of detail in the hydrogen region. Switching to PixInsight for pre- and post-processing was also a very significant upgrade to the quality of my images.

The very bright star Alnitak is one of the three stars in Orion's belt. It illuminates the Flame nebula (NGC 2024), but much of the reflected light is blocked by dark dust that lies in front of it and this creates the dark three-like structure.

The Horsehead nebula (IC 434) is also a silhouette formed by dark dust, surrounded in red glowing hydrogen gas illuminated by the star near the top of the frame (Sigma Orionis).

Rev. C was made one year later: I added some H-alpha frames from my new camera that were shot in very poor transparency, so the quality was not good, but they enhance the DSLR image pretty well.

Original
B
C
Final
D

B

Description: Less aggressive stretch with MaskedStretch and some Curves adjustments

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: One year later: added a little H-alpha data for a HaRGB version

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: Added much better H-alpha data

Uploaded: ...

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