Barnard 33 and IC434: This is part of the Orion molecular cloud complex. The centerpiece of this image is the iconic Horsehead Nebula, catalogued as Barnard 33 (or B33). The red background is an emission nebula, catalogued as IC434; the Horsehead Nebula is a dark nebula between us and the emission nebula, so we see it in silhouette against the light background. The blueish area below and to the left of the horse head is NGC2023, a nearby emission (pink stuff) and reflection (blue stuff) nebula.

This area is about 1500 light years from us; the horse head is about 3.5 light years high.

I last imaged this iconic part of the sky at high resolution 19 years earlier. To see what a combination of better equipment, better skies, and better skills does, click here.

Also, to see this area in the context of a much larger portion of the Orion Molecular Cloud, click here; this is an image that I created from data I gathered over four of the five winters, 2012-2016.

Technical Information:

(HaRL)(HaR)GB: 750:360:550:180:220 (a total of a bit over 34 hours of exposures); luminance layer consists of blend of 24 fifteen-minute images using a luminance filter, 37 fifteen-minute images using a red filter, and 25 thirty-minute images using an Ha filter; R channel is a blend of the red data and the Ha data also used in the luminance layer; G consists of 12 fifteen-minute images taken through a green filter, while B is the combination of 11 twenty-minute images taken through a blue filter.

Equipment: RC Optical Systems 14.5 inch Ritchey-Chrétien carbon fiber truss telescope, with ion-milled optics and RCOS field flattener, at about f/9, and an SBIG STX-16803 with internal filter wheel (SBIG filter set), guided by an SBIG AO-X/STX Guider, all riding on a Bisque Paramount ME German Equatorial Mount.

Image Acquisition/Camera Control: Maxim DL, controlled with ACP Expert/Scheduler, working in concert with TheSky X.

Processing: All images calibrated (darks, bias and sky flats), aligned, and combined in Pixinsight. Color combine in Pixinsight. Ha data blended into the luminance and color layers in Pixinsight. Some finish work (background neutralization, color calibration, deconvolution, gradient removal, Multiscale Linear Transform for noise reduction, done in Pixinsight; some finish work (LRGB combination, saturation adjustment) was done in Photoshop CC.

Location: Data acquired remotely from Sierra Remote Observatories, Auberry, California, USA.

Date: Images taken on many nights during January and February of 2022. Image posted February 16, 2022.

Date: Image scale of full-resolution image: 0.56 arcseconds per pixel.

Seeing: Variable, with individual calibrated luminance images having FWHM varying from 1.4 to 2.9 arcseconds.

CCD Chip temperature: -25C

Copyright 2022 Mark de Regt

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