1/31/05 B33 The Horsehead Nebula

The third Annual Horsehead shot from Conlin Hill Observatory! This time around I used the HA filter to obtain the luminance for the image. I got about 3 hours of HA data with the moon out on 12/20/04. January 8th was a nice night, though cold, and I was able to obtain another 2 hours of HA then. It took a full 5 hours of HA to make a decent LUM channel for this image! Clouds, wind, and work all conspired against me and I was unable to obtain any color data before the Moon became prominant again in January. Finally on the nights of January 30 and 31 with the moon in hiding, I was able to take the red, green and blue needed to finish the shot! By this time of year, Orion (and the Horsehead) are at their height and heading West in the early evening so there's not much time to obtain good data.