The Cuyahoga Astronomical Association has a number of members interested in and skilled at astrophotography – an activity that is both similar to and different from traditional terrestrial photography. One of our skilled practitioners is Joe Golias, owner of Astrozap.com – local maker and seller of telescope accessories. Golias was in attendance at a winter star party in Florida when he made the remarkable image seen above.

“Conditions were pretty good throughout the week with the exception of one strong storm that hit mid week,” Golias wrote. “Otherwise is was clear, calm and warm most of the time. This was not my intended target but had some issues with a dead battery the first night in my mount which killed my go to capabilities. I had to pick an object that I could easily see through my spotting scope and just decided to concentrate on this object the rest of the week.”

Technical Information:

Object: IC 434 & B33 – The Horsehead Nebula
Acquisition Data: The Florida Keys, February 2017
Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106EDX IV @ f/5.0
Mount: Losmandy G-11
Camera: SBIG STT8300 with self-guiding filter wheel.
Exposure time: 12 Hours using the following filters. HA, Red, Blue & Green.
Processing Software: Images Plus and Photoshop 7.0.