Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  48 sig Ori  ·  50 zet Ori  ·  Alnitak  ·  B33  ·  Horsehead nebula  ·  IC 431  ·  IC 432  ·  IC 434  ·  IC 435  ·  NGC 2023  ·  NGC 2024  ·  Orion  ·  Sh2-277  ·  The star Alnitak (ζOri)  ·  The star σOri  ·  VdB51
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The horsehead nebula (B33) and it's surroundings, Sven Hoffmann
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The horsehead nebula (B33) and it's surroundings

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The horsehead nebula (B33) and it's surroundings, Sven Hoffmann
Powered byPixInsight

The horsehead nebula (B33) and it's surroundings

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Description

I cannot fathom that I never took a photo of this iconic object before. Three years into this hobby I only took some HA of it so far. So this winter I thought that it's time. I knew about the challenges but I was prepared

The most challenging aspect is obviously keeping Alnitak in check. I did this by utilizing data from another camera type and mixed it 50/50 with the ASI data so the diffraction effects would be reduced a bit. The halo from my Baader blue filter is also pretty massive and also caused me some problems trying to reduce.

Adding a ton of HA data really helped me bring out the details though. All in all I think this is an insanely pretty region of space.

I recently read that the horsehead is 3 lightyears high. Imagine just this fact. A particle of light will need three years (!) to travel from the horseheads top to it's bottom. Fascinating!

Edit: I just finally found out where I got the 8300 sensor data from. It was from DSW public data. I downloaded it some time ago and couldn't figure out where I got it from until I compared the file sizes with a fresh download just now. So to be 100% transparent here: The 16h of my data I combined with 90m of R, G, B data from DSW to tame the Alnitak reflections from the ASI. Still credit is due: Some (~33%) of the color data is: "Image Acquisition by the staff at Deep Sky West Remote Observatory (www.DeepSkyWest.com)"

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The horsehead nebula (B33) and it's surroundings, Sven Hoffmann