Imaged from Beckwith Township

The Blue Horsehead Nebula is a faint reflection nebula that lies in the constellation Scorpius along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy; and only takes on it's form with longer imaging (i.e. cannot be seen with the naked eye). The main part of the molecular cloud complex catalogued as IC 4592.

Reflection nebulae are actually made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue due to the tendency of interstellar dust to more strongly scatter blue starlight from nearby energetic stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is the star Nu Scorpii at the eye of the horse.. A second reflection nebula catalogued as IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars located just below the horse's "ears".

IC 4592 is over 400 light-years away. At that distance, the view spans nearly 40 light-years.

Shot with: Nikon D5300 (unmodified) and a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens @ 135mm f/5.6; ISO 400; Celestron AVX mount; guided with SSAG; and PHD2.

45 x 4 minute subs were shot for a total integration of 180 minutes or 3 hours.

Stacked in PixInsight; and processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop CC.