Sunday, December 16, 2007

Horsehead Nebula


Not the definitive image of this object, but definitely one of the more difficult things I've ever attempted. The red cloud that provides the background for the horsehead is composed of ionized hydrogen, and glows in a specific color that the stock Canon Digital Rebel XT is almost blind to. That means I had to stretch this image like salt water taffy to get it to show up. On the other hand, the Flame Nebula to the left looks pretty good.

Shot 30 x 3 minutes through the AT80EDT piggybacked and guided with the LX200. Had some trouble with the declination guiding (should have just turned it off) so I tossed out about a third of the images. Now that I see what I can get from my back yard, I really want to shoot this again from darker skies.

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