From Wikipedia:
The
Horsehead Nebula (also known as
Barnard 33) is a small
dark nebula in the constellation
Orion. The nebula 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 422 parsecs or 1,375
light-years from Earth. It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of its resemblance to a
horse's head.
NGC 2023 is an
emission and
reflection nebula in the
equatorialconstellation of
Orion. It was discovered by the
German-born astronomer
William Herschel on 6 January 1785. This reflection nebula is one of the largest in the sky,
[4] with a size of 10 × 10 arcminutes.
[3] It is located at a distance of 1,300 ly (400 pc) from the
Sun, and is positioned ~15
′ to the northeast of the
Horsehead Nebula.
[2]The horse head was one of my earliest bucket list targets, which proved to be
pretty easy to capture with a Ha filter. Now I've finally found time to get a closeup with my larger scope and I'm actually more impressed with the nearby reflection nebula NGC 2023.
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