Tagged: Dark - Adam Lundie - Eatons Hill Observatory

The dark molecular clouds of Barnard 92 (center) and 93 (left) are superimposed over the Messier 24 Sagittarius Star Cloud.

The Snake Nebula (also known as Barnard 72) is a small but S-shaped dust lane that snakes out in front of the Milky Way star clouds.

After switching from a Celestron CGEM DX to a Skywatcher EQ8 Pro, and from off-axis guiding to on-axis guiding I am very happy with the results. This is a 25 minute test shot of the Horsehead Nebula.

I decided to take advantage of the only clear night for over a week to play with some new toys: an Astronomik 6nm Hα filter, and a Starlight Xpress adaptive optics unit. After learning how to calibrate and use the AO, I settled on the Horsehead Nebula as my target.

I have only a few nights experience with astrophography, so while I wait for my new camera, I'm using my wife's full frame DSLR. Since it's not so sensitive to emission nebula, I thought I'd try a dark nebula.

Often I like to see how an image is processed from start to finished. Presented in this animation are the main processing steps in sequence from my image of the Horsehead Nebula