B33 The Horsehead Nebula

B33 is a dark nebula silouetted against the brighter emission nebula, IC434.  It's resemblance to the head of a horse, or the knight in chess, gives it its popular name.  The background nebula is not very bright making the contrast between light and dark rather poor, so this is a difficult object.

	After several attempts, this is the first half-decent picture I have managed to capture.  It was one of the first pictures captured with my recently-aquired Starlight Xpress MX716 camera.  It may not be obvious in this highly-processed image, but it was slightly out of focus.  It was taken through my ST80 refractor which didn't have an elecric focuser and focusing is difficult with a camera that takes a significant time to download an image.  I have tried to correct this with Focus Magic which does a good job but is not perfect. Date and Time: 25th February 2008 20:27 to 22:41 UT Camera: Starlight Xpress MX716 Telescope: Skywatcher ST80 refractor with Astromomik Hα filter Capture: 12 10-minute exposures and one dark frame Processing: K3CCDTools. 10 frames stacked. PhotoImpact. Contrast 90, brightness 89.  (Although done differently, this corresponds to a stretch of the histogram in RegiStax of around 5-50.) Focus Magic 2,100
	And now a closer view taken with my LX200.  It was taken on a night of quite exceptional clarity.  This is much the best image I have obtained of this very dark object at this scale. Date and Time: 9th December 2010 01:30 to 03:12 UT Camera: Starlight Xpress MX716 Telescope: LX200 with 0.33 focal reducer and Astromomik Hα filter Capture: Nine 2-minute and 14 5-minute exposures with dark frames Processing: star_mx7: dark subtraction and enhancement factor 25 RegiStax: 9 and 11 frames stacked, wavelets 1-2 = 5. RegiStax: the two frames stacked and gamma 1.3 PhotoImpact. Despeckled and Focus Magic 1,100

			Home		DSOs