Horsehead Nebula in HSO (IC 434 / Barnard 33)

Here is my image of the Horsehead Nebula IC 434 and also referred to Barnard 33 is processed in the “HSO” color pallet.

It was captured with a cooled monochrome Astro camera called the ZWO1600mm Pro and uses special filters to bring out the color of the gasses that the Nebula emits. The H stands for “Hydrogen Alpha for Ha “, The S stands for “Sulfur ii” and the “O” stands for “Oxygen iii”. Those combined in the order of HSO Pallet replaces the normal “RGB” for color channel output. So I used an HA Filter for the Red channel and  had a total exposure of over 7 hours broken up into 10 minute exposures. The Sii filter was used to replace the Green Channel with 5 hours of 10  minute exposure times. and the Oiii Filter was used to replace the Blue channel with 5 minutes of exposure time.

This process is called Narrowband imaging and is widely used in the Astrophotography world. Even the Hubble telescope uses Narrowband image to capture it’s remarkable images, only it is mainly processed in “SHO” which is referred to as the Hubble Pallet. They just use Sii as the Red channel, HA for the Green Channel and Oiii for the Blue channel.