Horsehead Nebula
One of the fascinating objects in the sky is the Horsehead Nebula, a swirling cloud of gas and dust that obscures the stars behind it. The nebula is located in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex where star formation is taking place.
First recorded by Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming on a photgraphic plate taken at Harvard College, E.E. Barnard wrote and early description of the nebula and catalogued it as Barnard 33. An interesting history of the Horsehead Nebula was published in Astronomy magazine last month (October, 2020).
This image was captured remotely using the 24-inch (61cm) operated by the Telescope.live web site at the El Sauce Observatory in the Rio Hurtado Valley in Chile. The image was processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop. The original images consist of four grayscale files captured with luminance (clear), red, green, and blue filters. The grayscale images were combined in Pixinsight to create the color image. Photoshop was used for some noise reduction and to make some minor tweaks and slight crop from the original. The field of view is approximately 30 arc seconds square.
Light, Shadow, Form, and Texture 