The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33)

The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33)

This nebula presents a truly striking view - a dark horse head against a bright background. The background is mostly hydrogen gas glowing from ionisation, similar to a glowing neon light. Our lightbar utilises just a few watts of electricity, but the nebula takes it to a cosmic level; It consumes radiation from extremely energetic stars that power a light show stretching several light-years across!

The dark horsehead is a cluster of thick interstellar dust blocking the light from behind. In the 23rd anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA used infrared imaging to pierce through the dust cloud and look into the horsehead. The resulting image was truly stunning:

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2493.html

(The data behind this image was from iTelescope.net, which I processed using Pixinsight and Photoshop)