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Ah, the Witches head nebula! I've tried photographing this one on at least a few other occasions and failed miserably. However, on the evening of Feb 26th from my driveway in Hartland, Maine, I managed to finally get this one. Unfortunately, that evening I spent at least an hour in sub zero temps trying to get this nebula centered in the field of view. It's such a dim reflection nebula, that my test exposures had to run 3 minutes just to figure out where she was. Because of this, I lost about an hour of exposure time and ended up with just two 10 minute exposures. The witches head is not a nebula in the traditional sense, its a reflection nebula, an interstellar cloud of dust that reflects the starlight of nearby Rigel giving it its blue color. While not directly viewable, it can be detected in long exposure photograph. The dust cloud is located about one thumbs width to the west of Rigel, the bright blue star making up Orion's front foot.
Technical Datab
Scope: Takahashi E-160
Guiding: ST4
Camera: Canon 20d
Composition: 2 10 minute RGB exposures aligned in registar and composited in PS7. Curves and saturation in PS7.
Filters: Hutech IDAS LPS |
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