Horsehead (Barnard 33) and Flame Nebula (NGC 2024)
The Horsehead and Flame nebulas are winter wonders that have been on my bucket list for a while. I had attempted to capture this a year earlier, but the cloudy UK skies meant it disappeared from view before I could finish. When it finally reappeared, I started afresh from Texas with 41 hours of exposures. The result is quite a smooth appearance with little grain, but still sharp.
This fitted perfectly into my field of view, requiring no cropping and ensuring every pixel on the sensor was utilised.
The big bright star is Alnitak at the left hand end of Orion’s belt. It required a lot of reining in during processing because its glow can easily overwhelm the image.
This picture was nominated for ‘Top Pick’ on the Astrobin website.
Telescope: ZWO FF107
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
Location: Texas, Starfront Observatories
Bortle 2
Red: 180x300 Green: 143x300 Blue: 163x300
30x20s for each filter for stars
Just below the Horsehead is a tiny object catalogued as HH 111. Herbig-Haro objects like this are created by stars in the process of forming. As they accrete matter, they eject jets of ionised gas. Even though this is just a few tiny pixels in size, I was really pleased it made an appearance.
