Saturday, March 23, 2013

IC 4592 Blue Horsehead in Scorpious

Not having a modded camera, I was limited to shooting reflection nebula with my unmodded 400D DSLR. First was M78 and next was this obscure object in Scorpious. I knew this will be challenging as it was very faint. Caliraya skies might not be dark enough to acquire good data but that burning desire to revisit this object led me to image it again. The usual process went on - acquisition, processing & post-processing. I got a pleasant surprise during post-processing when I noticed that it had striking resemblance with the Witch Head Nebula I shot last year. Both were looking at a bright star. The witch head at Rigel, and now the Blue Horse head at Graffias or Beta Scorpii. But the similarity ended there. The Blue Horse head is extremely faint. So faint that I might be so foolish to shoot it with a stock DSLR. I was wondering why there were not many images of it on the web compared to its namesake-horsehead nebula in Orion. Now I know-it is not photogenic!