The Horsehead Nebula & Flame Nebula

Digging back in the archives

The Horsehead Nebula & Flame Nebula

The Image

Click for a bigger, full-res image. I find astrophotos look best with my phone brightness up to max to see all the details if you are on mobile.

Notes

I’m digging way back into my archives while I’ve been waiting for some free time and less cloudy weather.

There are a bunch of things going on in this image. The dark cloud that makes up the horse head on the right is a heavily dust-filled cloud of gas that blocks the stars and other gases of the nebula behind it.

The bright circular star in the center is Alnitak, a very bright supergiant blue star which is one of the three stars that make up the famous Orion’s Belt constellation.

And finally, the Flame Nebula on the left is a large area of new star formation made up of mostly hydrogen gas.

I shot this over two nights in December of 2022. It’s made up of over 6 hours of data, across 5-minute and 10-minute exposures. Capturing the details of the horse head without letting super bright Alnitak blow out the image makes it tricky to capture and process.

This is one of the first nebula images I captured when I first started to get into the hobby, and watching this image slowly materialize as I processed the data is a big part of the reason I ended up getting hooked on astrophotography.

I hope you enjoy the image!

Kristian