Horsehead Nebula in Orion (IC434)

I finally managed to get some more imaging time on the Horsehead and enough data to make a color image. This is a false color image using 3 hours of hydrogen alpha images (Ha) for the red channel, 3 hours of ionized oxygen (OIII) images for the green channel and the blue channel synthesized as a 90%-10% mix of OIII and Ha.

I'm in the process of saving up for a modern CCD camera but in the meantime... Not too bad for a 10 year old camera (Starlight MX716) with a chip the size of a gnat!

Astro-Tech 65EDQ 65mm f/6.5 telescope, Starlight Xpress MX-716 CCD camera, Astronomik H-Alpha and OIII filters, Losmandy G11 mount. Guided using an Orion StarShoot autoguider attached to a 9x50 finderscope and PHD software.

18 x 10 minute integrations (3 hours total time each) for H-Alpha and OIII, 10 x 10 minute darks, 10 x 1/10th second bias frames.