Photo of the Week for December 14, 2018
Orion is unquestionably the iconic constellation of the winter season. It’s not only home to one of the finest deep-sky treasures (the magnificent Orion Nebula, M42), it also lays claim to one of the best known dark nebulas, the famed Horsehead, also catalogued as Barnard 33 (B33). Although a notoriously difficult visual object requiring the darkest skies and more magnification than is usually expected, the Horsehead photographs quite readily.
Greg Polanski, recorded this portrait of the Horsehead Nebula from the Dark Sky Preserve in North Frontenac, Ontario, with a Sky-Watcher Black Diamond 150/750 6-inch f/5 reflector telescope (fitted with a Sky-Watcher coma corrector) and a QHYCCD QHY163C imaging camera. The final picture combines a total of 1.8 hours of image data shot through a IDAS LPS D1 filter.
