IC434, The Horsehead Nebula (Paul Kent)

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

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IC434, The Horsehead Nebula

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IC434, The Horsehead Nebula

The horsehead nebula in Orion, is an emission nebula. Located just left of centre is the very bright and hot star Alnitak (29,500K). This is a very troublesome star for astro-imagers as it tends to produce a large halo caused by internal reflections with the telescope system (and it is the case for us as well). Alnitak is the left hand star in orions belt. Two prominent emission nebula are seen here. To the right of Alnitak is the horsehead nebula itself. A pillar of dark dust, providing a horsey silhouette against a backdrop of red ionised hydrogen gas. To the lower left of Alnitak is the flame nebula. This is also composed of predominantly H gas. To the lowere left of the horsehead is a small patch of reflection nebula. Here light from the central star is being scattered, in the smae way bthat light from the sun is scattered by our atmosphere. This is what makes the sky blue and the reflection nebula blue. This region is part of a larger dust and gas complex, known as the Orion Molecular Cloud and covers pretty much the whole constellation. You may notice that the region below the horsehead is somewhat devoid of stars, dark, and what stars there are are all red. This is because that region is full of cool dust, and very effectively absorbs visible light from the stars behind. In the infrared, the dust becomes immediately apparent and the stars behind now shine through. There are several good examples of the Horsehead region in the Infrared from professional telescopes and these are well worth a look. So in this image there are examples of emission, absorption and scattering. The image is composed of around 15.75 hrs of data takem through LRGB and Ha filters. The Ha filter picks up the red gas very well.

Entre Encinas y Estrellas (e-EyE)

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IC434, The Horsehead Nebula

IC434, The Horsehead Nebula

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