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Black Beauty in the night sky facing Raging Flames – or is this horse rather a sea horse?
Isn’t it amazing, that gas and dust can look so appealing? It just needs to be plenty of it, and it needs to be far enough away from us.
The Horsehead Nebula is one of those iconic objects that grace our night sky. When first detected in 1887, it was not quite clear what this object was. It was not even clear, whether there are just no stars in this patch of sky, or whether the light of the stars was blocked by something in front of them. Today we are smarter. The Horsehead Nebula is formed by cold gas (mostly hydrogen and carbon hydrides), as well as dust. Gas and dust block the light of the stars and bright emission nebulae behind them.
If you would like to throw a glance to the Horsehead with your own eyes, there is good news and bad news. The good news: the Horsehead is located in an “easy to find” prime neighborhood, directly beside the leftmost of the three stars that form the belt of Orion. You won’t have a problem finding the right spot even from a typical inner city location. The bad news: the Horsehead doesn’t shine, rather the opposite (it blocks light). So it requires serious telescopes, to be able to see this dark nebula. With a camera however, it is much easier to capture our Black Beauty in the night sky.
Now the name “Horsehead Nebula” was granted already over 100 years ago for obvious reasons. However, the shape of this space horse reminds my wife rather to a sea horse than to a terrestrial horse. And I fully agree, not only because it is my wife ;)
At the left of the Horsehead Nebula resides the Flame Nebula. Detected already 1786 by Wilhelm Herschel, it is a nebula of gas, that is ionized by close-by stars and therefore emitting light.
A monochromatic version of this image, revealing only the hydrogen clouds, can be seen here.
Now the nerdy part: the image was taken in La Palma over 4 nights, with a moon phase between 15% and 46%. It is composed out of over 200 individual exposures between 2 to 4 minutes each, thus summing up to 11 hours and 30 minutes of collecting light. The imaging was done with a Newtonian Telescope of 430 mm focal length and a cooled 12 bit monochromatic astronomy camera, using a Hydrogen-alpha-filter, as well as filters for red, green and blue color. The editing was done solely in PixInsight.
La PalmaLa Isla BonitaCanary IslandsHorsehead NebulaBarnard 33B 33Flame NebulaNGC 2024Wilhelm HerschelConstellationOrionH alphaHydrogen alphaRGBCold GasDust CloudsEmission Nebula
