The blue horsehead (IC 4592)

Posted: May 16th, 2009

This image was selected as NASA's May 21, 2009 Astronomy Picture of the Day.

IC 4592 is a reflection nebula in Scorpius, sometimes named "the blue horsehead", that surprisingly is not photographed very often, as it's a beautiful and colorful object. It's also very large (relative to us), especially compared to it's cousin, the most popular Horsehead in Orion.

I have to credit my wife Ariana for being the one who came up with the framing of this object. I'm very happy she's the one who came up with it - I can't think of a better way to frame the "blue horsehead". Thanks Ariana!

As for the session, it was a very warm night at the DARC Observatory (average 70F), which forced me to cool the STL at "only" -5C. Despite I'm fighting a problem with the focal reducer, this image didn't turn out too bad. I was originally planning to add more RGB subs to get more accurate colors - yes the image is super colorful but the color data wasn't very detailed. In the end I decided to leave it as it is, and perhaps revisit this object next year.

[Show image details]

DATE May 1st, 2009 PHOTO Exposure: L: 20 x 10', RGB: 4x10' each, Total: 5.3 hours Focal: 385mm, f/3.6	EQUIPMENT Imaging Scope: FSQ 106 EDX w/Reducer Camera: STL11k Guide Camera: StarShoot Autoguider Imaging Scope: EM-400	SITE & CONDITIONS DARC Observatory Seeing: Very Good Transparency: Good SOFTWARE Stacking: DeepSkyStaker Processing: PixInsight & Photoshop

:: 6 Comments

Comments

Jorge (Contact, Page), May 21st, 2009, 10:22

Nice shot Rogelio,

You shall be proud of this beautyfull pic.

Best regards

RBA (Contact, Page), May 21st, 2009, 16:37

Thanks Jorge!

Ann Sidbrant (Contact, Page), June 14th, 2009, 9:10

Personally I love colorful images, where the colors are true but a little "turned up", and I think this image is absolutely gorgeous, color-wise. Also, the general composition is stunning. You can really, really see the horse shape, and you can see how the horse is gazing intently at bright star Beta Scorpii. Amazing!

RBA (Contact, Page), June 14th, 2009, 11:09

Thank you Ann. Yes I also like saturating the color a bit (but hopefully not too much).

As for the composition, as I mentioned in the comment about this image, my wife Ariana was the one who decided the framing of this image - we took a widefield image from the Internet of this area, drew a rectangle of the size of my field of view, then she moved it around, rotated it, etc. until she said: "there, this is how you should frame it". Now, every time I'm about to take a wide field of an area in the sky, I always ask her first :-)

Pavel Belozertsev. (Contact, Page), April 11th, 2010, 3:24

Es perro o lobo.
Muy hermosa pic.
Me gusta tu pic's.

Here star inside the blue nebula it is eye of this blue dog or blue wolf.

Pavel Belozertsev. Russia. Irkutsk.

Pavel Belozertsev. (Contact, Page), April 17th, 2010, 22:35

This nebula "Blue wolf's head" in Scorpius.
"La cabeza de lobo azul".

Pavel Belozertsev. Russia. Irkutsk.

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