IC 434 - The Horsehead (And Flame) Nebula Astrophotography
Updated: Oct 10
IC 434 (The gases behind the horse’s head) and Barnard 33 (The actual horse’s head dark nebula) form the famous Horsehead nebula, not far from the Orion Nebula.
Photographing this nebula is easy, as long as you spend enough time on it, as the red gases of IC 434 are pretty faint and will look grainy if the total exposure time is too low.
IC 434 refers to the pink cloud you see behind the horse's head. Barnard 33 is the actual Horse Head, which is a dark nebula.
Object Designation: IC434 (HA gas) | B33 (horsehead)
Common Name: The Horsehead Nebula
Constellation: Orion
Object Type: Emission Nebula | Dark Nebula
Distance: 1,260 light-years away
Magnitude: 4.5 | 6.8
Discovered on: February 1st 1786 by William Herschel, or 1888 by Williamina Flemming
We imaged this target several times, with different equipment going from a simple DSLR camera and tripod to a telescope and narrowband filters! We'll show you our favorite attempts below.
In the northern hemisphere, IC 434 starts to rise at a good time in November and stays high until January. This means the best time to photograph the Horsehead Nebula is in the Winter season.
The Horsehead Nebula with a small refractor from the city
January 2021
In January of 2021, we made a video where we photographed the Orion Nebula with a small refractor telescope from the city. We used a one-shot color cropped sensor camera for that shot along with a dual-band filter. The image turned out great for just 9.75 hours of exposure (see it HERE!).
A few days later, we set up our equipment again but this time took off the filter and the OSC camera, and instead attached our monochrome camera with filter wheel. The camera used is the QHY600M which has a full frame sensor, so our field of view is much wider! Because of that we were able to include both the Horsehead Nebula and the Orion Nebula in a single frame!
We ended up getting about 8 hours and 15 minutes in total. The color palette here is rarely seen, and might not be to your liking, but we wanted to get a little crazy and we tried an O/H/S combination instead of the usual S/H/O or H/S/O. You can see that image in our new video HERE.
NASA teased us by featuring it on their "Sky" Facebook page, so we decided to keep on imaging it every single night until reaching 30 hours of exposure. Here it is below!
GEAR USED:
Camera: QHY600M
Telescope: Radian Raptor 61
Mount: Atlas EQ-G motorized Mount
Guiding: ZWO ASI290MM Mini
Acquisition: ZWO ASIAir Pro
Processing: Pixinsight with RC-Astro Plugins
ACQUISITION DETAILS:
Total Exposure Time: 30 hours
Exposure Time per frame: 10 minutes for the nebulosity / 10 seconds for the core
180 lights for the nebulosity / 15 lights for the core - 15 Darks - 15 Flats
Filters used: Chroma 3nm Narrowband
GAIN: 56
Below you can see the difference in framing between an APS-C camera and a full-frame camera!
We also made a starless version, this time using the Hubble Palette (SHO) which looks really nice and has a peaceful feel to it. The details in the gases can also be seen slightly better when there are no stars everywhere. Let us know what you think of this starless version, we like it a lot!
More than 3 years later (September 10, 2024), NASA picked the SHO image with stars to be featured as our 4th APOD!
Make sure to watch our full video about how we photographed this area of the sky from our backyard!
The Horsehead Nebula with an unmodified DSLR camera
December 2017
The photo below was the result of 4 hours of exposure, using an 8” reflector telescope.
This was actually our very first target with our first telescope. At that time, our auto-guiding camera was glitching and did not want to work. We could only do 3 minutes of exposure time and even then, there was some star trails and blur in all the images. When we exchanged the guiding camera, the horse was too low in the horizon to re-do it, so we promised ourselves that we would meet again in 2017.
We spent 4 hours, guided, on IC 434, and it looks much better now! Still not perfect, but great for a first light!
GEAR USED:
Camera: Canon 7D Mark II
Telescope: 8" Astrograph
Mount: Atlas EQ-G motorized Mount
Processing: Pixinsight
ACQUISITION DETAILS:
Total Exposure Time: 4 hours
Exposure Time per frame: 6 minutes
40 lights - 10 Darks - 30 Bias
ISO: 800
How to find the Horsehead Nebula
The Horsehead and flame nebula can not be seen with the naked eye, and are too faint to be seen through binoculars. It is also a challenging object to find through telescopes, mostly because the horse’s head is a dark nebula, while the gas behind it is made of hydrogen. The use of a filter on a large aperture telescope will help spot the group, but both NGC 2023 and NGC 2024 will be more visible than IC 434 and Barnard 33.
Here you can see the location of the Horsehead Nebula in relation to our galaxy, the Milky Way. As you can see, the nebula is very close to the Sun when looking at the big picture!
The easiest way to find the Horsehead nebula is to locate the bright star Altinak, in Orion’s belt. Pointing your telescope at this star will ensure that you are on target, then you will simply have to re-center the nebula before photographing it. Another way to find it if planning to do some wide field photography is to aim your lens towards the Orion Nebula.
Other popular deep sky objects near the Horsehead Nebula are:
The Flame Nebula
IC 434 Information
The Horsehead Nebula is large and colorful, but the actual horsehead is a small dark cloud of dust known as Barnard 33. This target as a whole is often simply called the Horsehead Nebula. You can learn more about the different types of nebulae on our Nebula astrophotography page.
The Horsehead Nebula by the Hubble Space Telescope
NASA released this picture of the Horsehead Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on April 13, 2019. This instantly became one of the most popular images by the HST! Due to the infrared wavelengths, the object looks partly transparent and almost spooky.
It shows an incredible view of the head of the horse, with bright stars in front and around it. Some galaxies are also visible in the background, although not very clearly. Worry not, the next picture you'll see in this post is the one from the James Webb Space Telescope, where the background galaxies are very visible!
The Horsehead Nebula by the James Webb Space Telescope
Five years later on April 29, 2024, NASA shared a new shot of the Horsehead Nebula, this time taken with the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam (near-infrared) instrument.
In this even closer shot, the galaxies above the horse's head are clearly visible, and you can make out the shapes of spiral, barred, and edge-on galaxies.
The blue in the image is the horsehead itself, Barnard 33, and is filled with cold molecular hydrogen gas. The red above it is part of IC434, and is made up of atomic hydrogen gas.
Horsehead Nebula Discovery
The discovery of IC434/B33 is a bit messy. Most websites show that the nebula was discovered on February 1st 1786 by William Herschel. Some other websites state that several people have been credited and/or discredited for the discovery over the years, but we now have a pretty good idea as to who actually discovered this magnificent deep sky object.
The main person we'll talk about here is the Scottish astronomer Williamina Paton Stevens Flemming, who discovered the Horsehead Nebula by analyzing a telescope-photogrammetry plate made by W. H. Pickering in 1888.
She described the nebula as "a semicircular indentation 5 minutes in diameter 30 minutes south of Zeta Orionis".
In her career, Williamina discovered 59 nebulae, 310 variable stars, and 10 novae. She is also credited as the person who discovered white dwarfs.
Want to see what the picture she analyzed looked like? Scroll down!
The First Picture of the Horsehead Nebula - 1888
The very first photographic plate of the Horsehead Nebula was taken in 1888, and comprised not only IC434 but also the Orion Nebula. This is the picture that Williamina analyzed to discover the Horsehead Nebula for the first time.
The brightest element of this image, besides the Orion Nebula, are the three stars making up Orion's sword! The bottom one, Alnitak, is famous for being an annoying star that easily produces a large halo when doing astrophotography with current equipment. You can see that this was also the case back then!
"Nebula" or "Nebulae"?
Photographing the Horsehead nebula often means capturing NGC 2023 and NGC 2024 in the same frame. But what are those?
The Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) is right next to the horse!
This nebula obviously got its name due to its shape, and you can see it on the left of our main image! In true colors, it has a mix of bright and dark yellows, as well as some dark dust overlapping it.
NGC 2023 is a small blue reflection nebula visible just on the bottom left of the horse.
Make sure to be careful as you bring out the details within its gases during processing. It has a very bright core and because of that it is pretty easy to blow out!
Here you can see the Horsehead Nebula again but this time with Narrowband filters. As you can see, NGC 2023 does not really pop that much in this palette, and appears orange instead of blue.
The rest of the image is mostly made up of blue color instead of red. Why? Simply because Oxygen was assigned to Red, when it's usually Hydrogen Alpha.
Cool Facts
Detected in photographs in 1888
Horse’s head would be invisible if there was no colorful gases behind it
Bright star Alnitak shines light into the flame
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Photographing IC 434 with a DSLR camera and lens wide-field
The Horsehead and Flame nebulae are an awesome target for wide field photography. Below you can see our wide field image of the target, using a 300m lens, on a Canon t3i and using a iOptron Skytracker to track the sky!
IC434 can also be obtained when imaging the huge Barnard's Loop emission nebula. You can also get M42 and M78 in the same frame if using a 85m or 50mm lens!
Below is Barnard's Loop, we spent 7.2 hours on the imaging (watch Episode 8!), using this time a 50mm lens, also tracking the stars with our Atlas EQ-G motorized Mount.
GEAR USED:
Camera: Canon 7D Mark II
Mount: Atlas EQ-G motorized Mount
Processing: Pixinsight
ACQUISITION DETAILS:
Total Exposure Time: 7.2 hours
RGB Exposure Time: 3.6 hours
Hydrogen Alpha Exposure Time: 3.6 hours
Exposure Time per frame: 6 minutes
73 lights, calibrated with Darks and Bias
ISO: 800
Single Shot & Processing of IC 434
Processing the Horsehead Nebula is a ton of fun! There is so much color, shapes, and nebulosity in the entire image that every processing step is both challenging and fun. The image below is what a typical mask of this target looks like, you can see it looks pretty awesome even with no color!
A single shot of 6 minutes of IC 434. You can already see so many details in the gases! Seeing this beauty on your camera screen really makes you happy and motivate you to take as many as you can!
This image is a full processing of just 7 frames at 6 minutes each. As you can see, the only way to really bring out the details is to be very aggressive with the processing steps, which is why you should really spend enough time on the imaging and not be too impatient to pack up!
Previous images of IC 434
Below are all of our images of IC 434 before reaching our first great result. See the progression!
IC 434 FAQ
In which constellation is IC 434 located?
You can find the Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion.
How big is IC434?
The emission nebula IC 434 stretches across approximately 40 light-years. From Earth, it appears to cover an area about 60 by 10 arc minutes.
How far is the Horsehead Nebula?
IC 434 is located about 1,260 light-years away from Earth.
How long should my exposure times be when photographing IC 434?
This is a nebula with both colorful and dark sections. It overall is dim, with faint gasses extended far from the horsehead itself. We suggest doing 10-minute exposures at least, and go up to 30 if your guiding is excellent.
Should I use a filter to image IC434?
IC 434 is full of Hydrogen Alpha. You can either shoot the entire thing in narrowband (H, S, O) or use a combination of RGB and HA to get a more natural look! If you own a color camera, you could shoot it without filter for several hours, and then later shoot a few hours with an HA filter added.
Final Thoughts
IC 434 is one of the most beautiful targets in the night sky. It is also great for beginners who are seeking a little bit of a challenge. This nebula, being part of the Orion constellation, stays high in the sky for a long period of time, allowing you to really take your time and ace your capture!
Have you captured the Horsehead Nebula? Attach your image in the comments and let us know your acquisition details!
Clear Skies,
Antoine & Dalia Grelin
Galactic Hunter
