Nebulae
Horsehead Nebula & NGC 2023
The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) and NGC 2023 in Orion, photographed by Pete Lawrence, about 1,500 light-years away.
Target details
The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) is a dark cloud of dust in Orion, just south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion's Belt. It's part of the vast Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, about 1,500 light-years away, and the horse's-head shape of its swirling dust makes it one of the most recognisable nebulae in the sky.
NGC 2023, to the lower left of the image, is an emission and reflection nebula about 1,467 light-years away, close to the Orion Nebula. At four light-years across it's one of the largest reflection nebulae known, lit by the hot star HD 37903.
Capture details
Data captured 13th, 14th & 15th February, 2018.
15x 3 minute exposures with Blue filter (Binned 2x2).
15x 3 minute exposures with Green filter (Binned 2x2).
15x 3 minute exposures with Red filter (Binned 2x2).
59x 3 minute exposures with Luminance filter.
Total Exposure 5.2 hours.
Equipment details
Skywatcher Quattro 200 CF
NEQ6 Pro
Atik 428EX Mono
Skywatcher ST-80
QHY5L-II
Processing details
This image was processed in Pixinsight & Lightroom.
Calibration and Stacking in Pixinsight using Batch PreProcessing.
Dynamic Crop - To remove black edges & integration artifacts. (Each Channel)
Dynamic Background Extraction - To remove gradients. (Each Channel)
Channel Combination - To combine RGB channels.
Photometric Colour Calibration - To calibrate colours.
Deconvolution - To bring out some fine detail & tighten stars, 50 iterations. (Luminance only)
Multiscale Linear Transform - Noise reduction. (RGB & Luminance seperately)
Histogram Transformation - To stretch the image.
LRGB Combination - To blend my luminance image with my RGB image.
TVGDenoise - Noise Reduction to LRGB image.
Channel Extraction - To extract Luminance.
Local Fuzzy Histogram Hyperbolization - To boost contrast, blended 50% with extracted Lum.
HDR Multiscale Transform - To recover some detail in NGC 2023.
Dark Structure Enhance - To boost detail in dark areas.
Curves Transformation - Increase saturation to entire image.
Curves Transformation - Increase Saturation of red, red mask in place.
TVGDenoise - To denoise background, with inverted rangemask in place.
Export as JPEG and import into Lightroom.
Contrast Boost (+25)
Clip Blacks (-15)
Noise Reduction - Luminance (+75)
Export final JPEG for upload.
Quick facts
- What is Horsehead Nebula & NGC 2023?
- The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) is a dark cloud of dust in Orion, just south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion's Belt. It's part of the vast Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, about 1,500 light-years away, and the horse's-head shape of its swirling dust makes it one of the most recognisable nebulae in the sky.
- Where is it in the sky?
- In the constellation Orion.
- What are its catalogue names?
- NGC 2023, HD 37903
- When was this photo taken?
- 15 February 2018
- How long was the total exposure?
- 5.2 hours
- What equipment was used?
- Skywatcher Quattro 200 CF, NEQ6 Pro, Atik 428EX Mono, Skywatcher ST-80, QHY5L-II
- Where was it taken from?
- Lisburn, Northern Ireland.