Barnard 150 - Seahorse Dark Nebula - June 2022
Televue 127is - AIS6200MM
A-P 1100 GTO AE, Antlia Pro LRGB & 3nm Ha filters
Ha: (25 x 300s exposures, Bin 2, Gain 200)
L: (44 x 75s, Bin 2, Gain 100)
RGB:(3 x 39 x 90s, Bin 2, Gain 100)
Total Integration Time = 5.9 hours
All three categories; emission, reflection, and dark nebulae, are visible in this image of B150, the Seahorse Nebula. Most of the image is covered in dust reflecting the light of stars and often creating blueish halos around them. The emission nebula appears red from the dominant emitted spectral line from hydrogen. The seahorse itself is composed of dark nebula that blocks out almost all the light from behind it.
The nebula lives in Cepheus within the dust of Milky Way, about 1200 ly away. The astronomer, E.E.Barnard catalogued 182 negative-space dark nebula shapes early in the 20th century, of which this is number 150.
I purposely went deep (took a lot of frames) in order to bring definition to the dust cloud itself. In processing, GHS was used to pull out this faint signal.
It reminds me of the fable/story of the kid who would not stop digging through manure because, with so much poop, there had to be a pony in there somewhere.