Horsehead Nebula - a photo on Flickriver

Horsehead Nebula

            The incredible Horsehead Nebula or Barnard 33 if we want to be a little more official. 
It’s stunning subjects like these that are primarily responsible for luring me into deep space astro, especially when I realised us amateur photographers can actually capture these objects from the garden. This was taken with a cooled camera (thanks Santa) using my Canon 100-400mm lens.

It’s also my first attempt at “narrowband” photography which is basically using filters to capture very limited wavelengths of light. These are specific to gases/colours which are common in deep space and avoid light pollution and moonlight issues.

The intention was to capture an hour or two of Hydrogen Alpha (deep red), then Suphur II (even more red) and finally Oxygen III (blue/green).  Capturing these three gases is very common and allows many post processing combinations including the colour pallet used by the Hubble Space Telescope.

On the only clear night we have had since Christmas I spent the first couple of hours getting used to the new kit and trying to understand what I was actually doing. Once I got going with the Ha I only managed nine 4 minute exposures before the damn cloud came in. 
Even though I only captured a small amount of data on a single colour and it’s noisy as hell, I thought it still worth posting as just to see these objects is pretty amazing.

One of the big advantages of astro photography is the acquisition of data, it never comes to end like it does with my other styles of photography. Once I get another chance I’ll add more Ha to this stack and then SII and OIII once I eventually get them. Even it if it takes me till next year, at some point I will have a stunning high quality image of the Horsehead.

Website (Holidays, Courses, Workshops) - Facebook - Twitter - 500px - etc : all in my profile

Taken on: January 5, 2020

Tags:

astro

horse

horsehead

nebula

deep

space

astrophotography

billycurrie

night

sky « less

Sets appears in: • Astro

Groups appears in: • The Night Shots • Photoshop Support Group more » • Adobe Lightroom • Canon 100-400L • Edinburgh Photographers • 'What Digital Camera' flickr group • Glasgow Photographers • ClanFlickr « less

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