IC434 - The Horsehead Nebula (blastrophoto)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: Flame Nebula · IC 434 · IC 435 · NGC 2023 · Orion B · The star σOri

IC434 - The Horsehead Nebula, blastrophoto

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IC434 - The Horsehead Nebula

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IC434 - The Horsehead Nebula

What you see here is the very popular and frequently imaged Horsehead Nebula otherwise known as IC434. Every year I like to do a little something with this target because this one means more to me on a personal level. Back in 2005-2009 I had the Horsehead nebula as my desktop wallpaper on my computer. And it stayed there all through my high school years. I thought it was the coolest looking thing I had ever seen. At that period of my life I knew I wanted to take pictures of the night sky but I thought that was a long shot of a dream. Fast forward 15+ years and I’ve not only made that dream a reality but I’ve also imaged the very same cosmic object that I fell in love with all those years ago. And every year since I’ve started this Astrophotography journey, I like to revisit my old cosmic friend to add a little data here, maybe touch up on processing, or to completely start from scratch. This year, I decided to take some color camera data I captured last year (about 9 hours) and add some beautiful Hydrogen Alpha data from the ASI294MM and ASI2600mm (about 10 hours). This image now consists of about 19 hours of total exposure time captured from my backyard.

Processing this was a wonderful experience. The rich hydrogen alpha data was smooth as silk. I’ll be posting in my story today the changes from last year, to this year, with addition to the Hydrogen Alpha stack (because it’s just too beautiful not to share).

Gear:
RGB Data (Captured Winter 2021)
Orion ED80 (390mm F4.8)
ASI294MC Pro
Astronomik L2 UV/IR Cut

Ha Data (Captured Winter 2022)
Explore Scientific ED80 (312mm f3.9)
ASI2600mm (4hrs)
ASI294MM (6hrs)
Astronomik HA 12nm filter

AstroBros
NOVAC
FriendlyCosmos

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Distribution of astrophotographers

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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Traveller
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Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5678568
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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IC434 - The Horsehead Nebula

IC434 - The Horsehead Nebula

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IC434 - The Horsehead Nebula

IC434 - The Horsehead Nebula

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