The Horsehead Nebula Region of Orion

This wide-field image of the Horsehead Nebula and it's surrounding regions was taken in September, 1994. It is a 90 minute exposure on un-hypered Fujicolor 800 using a Nikon 400mm f/2.8 lens at f/2.8 mounted on a Losmandy G-11 equatorial mount. Guiding was accomplished through a Vixen 90mm refracting telescope mounted beside the camera lens.

I chose to frame the image this way in order to also capture M78, the small nebula you can see in the upper left corner of the image.

The negative was scanned using a Kodak PhotoCD scanner and processed in Photoshop on a Macintosh Quadra 800. The digital processing was able to bring out the subtle red glow of the gas surrounding this area. The entire region of Orion is awash in this subtle nebulosity which is only visible in long-exposure photographs.

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