Horsehead Nebula, IC 434,CDK24

The Horsehead Nebula i It is one of the most iconic features in our Milky Way and is widely photographed. It is a reflection nebula made up of obscuring gas in the shape of a horse’s head back illuminated by the red light emission from Hydrogen gas. Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, this dusty interstellar molecular cloud has by chance assumed an immediately recognizable shape. Fittingly known as The Horsehead Nebula, it lies some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex. About five light-years “tall,” the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33, first identified on a photographic plate taken in the early 20th century. B33 is visible primarily because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glow of emission nebula IC 434. Hubble Space Telescope images from the early 21st century find young stars forming within B33. Of course, the magnificent interstellar cloud will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years. But for now the Horsehead Nebula is a rewarding though difficult object to view with small telescopes.  This image was done with Martin Pugh’s CDK24 in Rio Hurtado Chile and is a mosaic of two images. It is a combination of narrowband  which captures the emission from Hydrogen gas and true color RGB. The overall processing of the final images was done in Photoshop CC2025.