IC434 in Orion consisting of NGC 2024 a vast cloud of gas that includes both the Flame Nebula, lower left, and the red colored emission nebula, a part of Orion B.  Orion B is partially obscured by Barnard 33, the Horsehead Nebula, a dark nebula of dust and gas that happens to take on the profile of a horse head from our line of sight.  Below and left of B33 is NGC 2023, a reflection nebula around the star HIP 26816. 

The very bright star center left is Alnitak, the easternmost star in Orion's Belt and the primary radiation source for most of the emission nebulae in this region.  Alnitak is a massive blue giant of magnitude1.7 and is about 47,000 times more luminous than our own sun.  It is also a double star with a much smaller and dimmer companion at magnitude 3.7 and less than 10 arc seconds away from its big brother.

The Orion B gas cloud is light years across and extends much further than is visible in this shot.  It encompasses well more than half of the constellation of Orion.  The same cloud makes up Barnard's Loop and the M42 region and extends west as far as NGC 1909, The Witch Head Nebula in Eridanus.  Long exposure, wide field images filtered for Hydrogen-Alpha wavelengths only reveal this massive cloud.

Date: 12/30/2005

 Location/Date:  American Horse Lake, 12/30/2005

Scope:  Orion 80ED APO Refractor, 600mm, f/7 (Artificial spider used for diffraction spikes.)

Camera:  Hutech 350D, Type I, ISO 800

Guiding:  ST402, LX200GPS 10” @ f/10

Exposure:  14 Integrations @ 4 min (56 min total), Dark and Flat Frame Calibrated

Processing:  Calibrated, Aligned, Combined, LRGB Sep, Pixel Math Adjust, LRGB Composite in ImagesPlus.

Scaling, Level Adjustment, Color Correction, Noise Reduction in Photoshop