IC434 - The Horsehead Nebula
Wed Oct 04 2023
I wanted to reprocess my image of this from October to see how I could improve and I’m really happy with the results! This was a tough one - I still wanted to use the hydrogen channel as the luminance layer but there’s no free lunch. Doing that would cause the beautiful reflection nebula NGC2023 (the blue region to the bottom left) to disappear. I had to get creative with masks and blending the natural red channel with the hydrogen to use as luminance to be able to get the best of both worlds - getting all that good Ha data and wispy regions along with NGC2023.
About this object
- Type
- Emission Nebula
- Constellation
- Orion (the Hunter)
- Apparent magnitude
- 11
- Apparent size
- 90.0′ × 30.0′
- Catalogue designations
- IC 434
The Horsehead Nebula is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion (the Hunter). It shines at about magnitude 11 and spans roughly 90.0′ × 30.0′ on the sky.
Acquisition
- Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 36 mm: 204 × 2m (6h 48m)
- Antlia V-Pro Red 36 mm: 121 × 1m (2h 1m)
- Antlia V-Pro Green 36 mm: 136 × 1m (2h 16m)
- Antlia V-Pro Blue 36 mm: 131 × 1m (2h 11m)
- Total integration: 13h 16m
Equipment
- Telescope / Lens: Celestron C8
- Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM Pro
- Mount: Celestron CGEM II
- Filters: Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 36 mm, Antlia V-Pro Blue 36 mm, Antlia V-Pro Green 36 mm, Antlia V-Pro Red 36 mm
- Guiding scope: SVBony SV106 60mm Guide Scope
- Guiding camera: ZWO ASI224MC
- Accessories: Celestron 0.63X SCT Reducer (94175), ZWO EFW 7 x 36mm
- Software: Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight
Astrophotography by David Joyce, AstroDavido.