The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33)

This is my second attempt at the Horsehead Nebula and my first time capturing with the 1600MM. Similar to my reshot of the Orion Nebula I wanted to assemble a larger mosaic of the structures. This project is a stacked two-frame mosaic across all three narrowband filters. I created two variants, an HSO version that combines ~56.25 hrs of total integration time along with a more natural HOO, bi-color version that uses only the Hydrogen-alpha and Oxygen 3 filters. This project is certainly one of the longest I’ve ever spent time on.

The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) is located at the left-most star in Orion’s Belt called Alnitak and is a part of the larger Orion Molecular Cloud. The horsehead shape is created by a column of dark dust and gas in the foreground of the emission nebula behind it. The nebula is roughly ~1300 light-years from us. Down and to the left you will also find the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) which is located nearby.

Learn more: 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula