The Flame Nebula

The Flame Nebula – NGC 2024 in Narrowband

Often photographed with it’s companion, the Horsehead – B33.
However, to me that classic composition is very busy, almost too much to look at in one frame – so I’m just concentrating on the swirling molecular clouds that make up the flame itself.
This is three hrs of Ha (20min subs) three hrs S2, two hrs O3 (all 5nm astrodons) RGB stars (10×1 min each)  = 8.7 hrs integration.
Tone mapped with J-P Metsavainio method and processed in Startools & PS6.
Hope you like it 🙂

Gold Award 2016 AIPP Victorian Professional Photography Awards

Silver Award (with Distinction) 2016 AIPP Australian Professional Photography Awards

About this Nebula

What lights up the Flame Nebula? Fifteen hundred light years away towards the constellation of Orion lies a nebula which, from its glow and dark dust lanes, appears, on the left, like a billowing fire. But fire, the rapid acquisition of oxygen, is not what makes this Flame glow. Rather the bright star Alnitak, the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion visible just to the right of the nebula, shines energetic light into the Flame that knocks electrons away from the great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there. Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionized hydrogen recombine.  The Flame Nebula is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region that includes the famous Horsehead Nebula. (APOD)