The Horsehead nebula is about 1500 light years from Earth, the bright reflection nebula to the bottom left is NGC 2023 and Alnitak (left hand star of Orion’s belt) is causing the flares emanating from the left hand side of the image.
The image was taken with an Orion Optics AG12 (1140mm focal length at F3.8) and QSI 683 camera and Maxim DL on 26 February 2019. Auto-guiding done with a 9×50 skywatcher 162mm focal length and lodestar. Sub frames (Baader LRGB filter set) consist of 20 luminance frames (180s 1×1 bin high gain -20C) and 12 sub frames each of RGB (90s 2×2 bin low gain -20C). Processed in PixInsight and a final high pass filter in Photoshop to enhance local contrast.
