A CCD taken with an STL-1301E camera thru Kopernik's 20-inch F/8.1 telescope working at F/5; total exposure time was an hour and 40 minutes.
The "Horse Head Nebula", Barnard 33, in Orion:
This CCD image shows only a small part of a vast complex of gas, dust, and newly forming stars. The bright red background running vertically thru the image is a part of bright nebula IC 434 and is both emission (mostly glowing hydrogen and oxygen) and reflection nebula. The bright bluish nebula to the upper left is NGC 2023 (mostly a reflection nebula). The "Horse Head" is a cloud of dark dust that is blocking light from the gas and stars behind it. There are new stars forming in this nebula. The Horse Head is in the constellation of Orion near the eastern belt star. It was discovered on photographs in the late 19th century. While E. Barnard did not discover this object, he was the first to recognize that it was a vast dark cloud blocking the light coming from behind it. He included it in his catalog of dark nebulae as B-33.
George Normandin, KAS
March 13th, 2010