B 33

Horsehead Nebula

The Horse Head Nebula (also known as Barnard 33) is a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of Altinak, the easternmost star of Orion's Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. It appears within the southern region of the dense dust cloud known as Lynds 1630, along the edge of the much larger, active star-forming HII-region called IC434.

Acquiring and processing details

I only imaged this beautiful nebula only once, a shame I know, I certainly gone do it again as soon as I can. The data was taken at December 30th, 2016. I've reprocessed this data in November 2020 with PixInsight giving a more satisfied result. Processing of this data isn't easy because there's a lot of dynamic range in the frame. The very bright start Altinak is prominent.

  • Magnitude: -
  • Distance: 1.375 ly
  • Apparent size: 8' x 6'
  • Date: December 30 - 2016
  • Integration Time: 4.67 hrs
  • Telescope: TS Photoline 102/715 x 0.79 f5.5
  • Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-Synscan Go-To
  • Camera: Canon 70D
  • Filters: -

Acquiring and processing details

After a few years it was about time I took again an image of this beautiful nebula. This one is part of a project of 4 panels to create a color mosaic. This is the first mosaic in H-Alpha data. In total 30x300" at gain 139 and offset 21. Stacking done in Astro Pixel Processor and very fast processing in PixInsight. In only did some noise reduction and stretching.

  • Date: February 12 - 2021
  • Integration Time: 1.9 hrs
  • Telescope: TS Photoline 130/910 x 0.79 at f5.5
  • Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-Synscan Go-To
  • Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool
  • Filters: Ha

April 11th, 2021

I've tried to combine the above data sets into one image in PixInsight. Given the fact I wasn't able to get the needed RGB data this year for my new project B33, I decided (because weather is lousy at the moment anyway) to put this to the test. I used the Ha channel as a luminance to combine it with the LRGBCombination process. Below is the final result. It's still not optimal but it(s going somewhere... I hope to be able next year to image the Horse Head with my TS61EDPH-II which gives it a perfect field of view.