DESCRIPTION: First Discovered in 1888 by Williamina Fleming at the Harvard College Observatory, This nebula is approximately 1500 light years away. It is one of the most identifiable nebulas in the sky. Just next to the horsehead nebula is star Alnitak which is the lower left star in Orions belt. This region has several other object that are part of this molecular cloud such as NGC2023 just below left of the horsehead, and NGC 2024 (Flame Nebula).
LOCATION: Raleigh, North Carolina
DATE: 12/17/17 1:21AM
SCOPE: 10" Meade LX200 f10
CAMERA: Sbig SFT-8300M
EXPOSURE: 1x300sL, 1x300sR, 1x300sG, 1x300sBNOTES: I took this picture to gain more experience with manual auto guiding, and as you can see it turned out pretty good. This shoot was done when the sky here was fairly dark which is a problem here. It was also the first time that I had used a new focal reducer from Meade(f/6.3). Their was a lot of vignetting which is now know to be an inherent problem with these SCT's, so the image has been altered to remove the segments where the light field is limited.