Astrophoto of IC434 – The Horsehead Nebula and the Flame by Elodie

Here’s the story of a photo that wasn’t supposed to exist…I had actually planned to delete the whole session, because it was a catastrophic night!

Shot from my dad’s lovely house near Toulouse, it took me over 2 hours to get the first raw image!

problems with the mount not lighting up, the autoguider not starting up, the rotten set-up… in short, I had to start the session without autoguider in 30-second bursts, just to say that I hadn’t taken the gear out for nothing.

When I got home, I realized that the mount had stopped tracking the target all of a sudden…wasting precious exposure time.

The result…really few poses and I wanted to throw it all away a few days ago when I thought I’d take a look anyway. And I did! Because despite the flaws, visible to the trained eye, it’s quite nice to look at as a whole, I think.

Anyway, enough talk, let’s get to the exifs

IC434 – Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula

Layer: 240x30s (total 2h)

R layer: 60x30s (total 30min)

Layer V: 26x30s (total 13min)

Layer B: 26x30s (total 13min)

Total exposure time: 2h56min

No DOF

No autosteering

Gear

Skywatcher 72ed evostar+reducer (357mm)

Zwo asi1600mm pro+RAF

Heq5 pro goto

Acquisition : Asiair

Stacking: Siril

Treatment

PixInsight

Small cosmetics: Photoshop