The Horse Head nebula is a special one for me. It was one of the first objects that I imaged when I began. I've told the store before...but...The first time was with an EdgeHD 800 on a AltAz mount with a wedge using Hyperstar. It was a freezing cold night and my best friend came over to shoot it with me. We built a fire on my driveway and sat outside in the freezing cold drinking beer and talking about my new hobby. It was a great night and remains one of my fondest memories of when I began my astro-imaging journey. We thought the resulting image was amazing at the time (it was a terrible image
).
My nights of sitting outside in the cold all night fretting over my rig are now long gone. Now, with my automated observatory, my telescope wakes up on its own and shoots what I told it to shoot. I stay in my nice warm bed and, in the morning, see what I collected. But I feel like I miss out on the wonder of a cold night with a fire, and a beer, and a buddy, watching each frame as it comes in and wondering what my final image will look like.
So, to remind myself of those nights, I image the horse head every year. Last year, I wasn't able to complete the data collection on it because there weren't enough clear nights to get it done. So I finished it off this year and this image will count for 2...
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