Photo of the Week for December 22, 2017

Regular visitors to this website will notice that when it comes to Photo of the Week, we seem to spend a lot of time in Orion. That’s because you spend a lot of time in Orion. It’s not surprising really—the Hunter is the most eye-catching of the wintertime constellations. Who can resist exploring Orion with a telescope or an astrophotography rig? It’s not only home to one of the finest deep-sky treasures, it also lays claim to one of the most iconic dark nebulas, the famed Horsehead. Although a notoriously difficult visual object requiring the darkest skies and more magnification than is usually expected, the Horsehead photographs quite readily. Even so, not many pictures feature the level of detail in this portrait by Aneroid, Saskatchewan, astrophotographer Stan Noble.

For this image captured on December 16, 2017, Stan combined 46, 240-second exposures recorded with a QHY163C CMOS camera attached to a Sky-Watcher ProED 80mm apochromatic refractor telescope (fitted with a Tele Vue 0.8× reducer/flattener).