Astro-Shed

Today’s image is an iconic image captured in December of ’24 featuring the Flame and Horsehead Nebulae. While these two nebulae in themselves are absolutely beautiful, there is a lot more in this image to be explored, so let’s get into it.

NGC 2024, commonly called “The Flame Nebula,” is an emission nebula. A dark dust lane bisects it and reaches into its various regions. This creates a three-dimensional effect that resembles a flame. The nebula is being excited by a cluster of stars obscured by the dark dust lanes.

Above NGC 2024 is the bright star Alnitak which is the furthest Eastern star in Orion’s belt. Alnitak is a bright, O-type, blue star which has two companion stars. The companions are not visible in the image due to the glare of Alnitak, however, they can be visually seen in moderate size scope at about 200x power.

The red swath across the top of the image is IC 434, another emission nebula. Embedded within is the famous Horsehead Nebula, Barnard 33. this nebula is an extension of a broader dark nebula that resides in the lower half of the image. You can notice that there are fewer visible stars below IC 434 than above it. This is the result of the dark nebula obscuring the stars on the lower half of the image.

Within the dark nebula and lying between the Horsehead and Flame nebulae is NGC 2023, a bright reflection nebula. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1785. The nebula is reflecting light from a small cluster of stars.

Lying at the lower right of the image is the tiny reflection nebula, IC 435. It is so small that it has an almost stellar appearance.

The above image was taken with an Astrotech AT80ED refractor, a ZWO ASI533ASI MC Pro camera through a ZWO Duo Band filter. Sixty – 3 minute exposures were integrated into the final stacked image. The image was stacked in Siril without flats or darks. Graxpert was used for gradient and noise removal. Seti Astro Suite was to stretch the image and process the stars. Final processing was done in Photoshop.