Getting Started on the Horsehead and Flame Nebula

Finally getting to work on the Horsehead Nebula, this is another target I have wanted to see since I was a young child and learned about it at the Hayden Planetarium. This is a difficult target for several reasons. It has fairly high dynamic range, with a very bright star and a lot of detail in the fainter areas on the nebula. My strategy to draw it all out is to image for a long time (goal ~20 hours) with short exposures (~60 seconds) to keep the star from over saturating the image. It also has some really varied colors, so I’ve elected to shoot with minimal filters to try to capture all of that detail. This will restrict me to the week and a half or so around the new moon.

Above is a screenshot of the framing wizard in NINA. As you can see The combination of the 60mm doublet with the ASI 294 is a really good fit for this target.

Unfortunately, this target doesn’t rise particularly high above the horizon here at 40 degrees north. It also happens to be on an arc located by some particularly high trees in my yard, so I’m restricted to about 25 degrees above the horizon on both the rise and the set, which gives me a total of about 6 hours per night. A quick stack of the data after the first night looks pretty good, check it out below on.