The Horse Head Nebula (Barnard 33) located in the constellation of Orion the Hunter. Barnard 33 is a dark nebula, caused by a dense dust cloud which obscures the light from the emission nebula IC-434 in the background. This dark dust cloud lies 1500 light years from earth and is 7 light years in extent. This dark cloud was discovered in 1888 by Scottish astronomer Willimina Fleming on a photographic plate taken by the Harvard College Observatory. The first description of the nebula was made by E.E. Barnard, describing it as "Dark mass, diameter 4 arc minutes, on the nebulous strip extending south from Zeta Orionis", and cataloged it as Barnard 33. This dark nebula is located just a short distance south of the brilliant blue-white star Zeta
Orionis, or Alnitak, which appears at the lower left hand corner of this image. The large area of nebulosity that lies just below Alnitak is NGC-2044, which is known as "The Flame Nebula"
This image, acquired on February 11, 2013, is a 1 hour integration of 10 minute exposures through the Celestron C-11 at f/2, using the HyperStar III imaging system and the Starlight Express SXVR-H694C color CCD camera operating at -10 degrees below ambient temperature and binned 1 X 1. Guided, captured and combined using Maxim DL5 Pro. Post processed using PhotoShop CS2, Gradient XTerminator, StarShrink, Carboni's Astro Tools and NoiseWare.