IC434 & NGC2024

25 Dark Frames
35 Flats
35 Darkflat
263 x 120s Light Frames 8.9 h Integration time

📡 Skywatcher EQ6-R Mount
📷 ZWO ASI 533MC Camera
🔭 Skywatcher Esprit 80
🔭 QHYCCD mini Guide Scope 130mm
📹 QHYCCD mini 5II Guide camera
💻 N.I.N.A & PHD2 Software during Acquiring
🖥  Pixinsight for Post Processing

IC 434 is an emission nebula visible in the constellation of Orion. Thanks to its presence, it is possible to observe the famous Horsehead Nebula, a dark cloud that overlaps it in our line of sight.

The nebula can be seen just south of the bright star Alnitak in Orion's belt, and shows up in long-exposure or CCD photos with medium-sized telescopes as a long, blade-shaped streak that heads south and tapers towards the tip. The eastern part is obscured at one point by a dark nebula that overlaps the light trail of IC 434, and takes on a shape so characteristic that it has earned the name Horsehead Nebula. It is part of the Orion Molecular Nebula Complex, a vast system of nebulae and stellar associations to which the Orion Nebula and Barnard's Ring also belong.

Thanks to its equatorial position it can be observed from all the populated areas of the Earth.

It is an H II region that extends south of Alnitak, on the southwestern edge of the large Orion B cloud; it has a very elongated north-south shape and receives the ionising wind directly from the star σ Orionis, a bright member of the large Orion OB1 association. The nebula reaches 70' in length and shows up easily in long exposure photos or CCD shots, although its thickness is only a few arcminutes.

The temperature of the region has been measured by various methods and using various radiation ratios, initially obtaining values between 8000 K and 7600 K; later this value was reduced to 3360 K and even less depending on the map taken as reference. An electronic temperature study carried out in 1992 gave a value more similar to the previous ones, which was around 6000 K.