Where's the Horsehead?

Date: 2/10/07

Time: 10:00PM - 12:00AM

Place: Earth 'n' Sky Farm, Calhoun, GA

Seeing: 8

Transparency: 8

Equipment: LX200 Classic 10" & LX200GPS 10"

Last night, Ron Niklasson and I were under some awesome skies. Transparency couldn't have been better, and the seeing was incredible. Even Sirius was perfectly steady. With Orion high in the sky, we decided to see if we could find the horsehead nebula. With this object only being 6' x 4', we really were not sure where to look. So, we broke out the maps, compared the views in our eyepieces, and after about 20 minutes, we now think we know where it is. If you are using a goto scope, and if your alignment and pointing accuracy are pretty good, the following should direct you right to the horsehead nebula. But, beware, this is a tough one to see. With our 10" scopes, we could not bag this one.

For us, the belt of Orion was really close to horizontal. Keep that in mind if you use our notes for locating the horsehead. After doing a goto, you should see three faint stars in a diagonal line. (Note: these three stars are not the belt of Orion) In our Meade LX200's that is a reversed field so the stars were lined up from upper right to lower left. The upper most and lowest of these three were just on the opposing edges of a 1/2° field of view. Using the middle and lowest stars, imagine a line that connects the two stars to make a right triangle. The right angle of this triangle will be below the second star and right of the third star. The location of this right angle is the general location of the horsehead nebula.

Keep in mind that you're looking for a 6' x 4' object. In a 1/2° FOV the longer part of the horsehead will be just shy of 1/4 of your FOV. We were able to make out a very faint bit of nebulosity, but were unable to detect the horsehead. Maybe another night. If you can further refine these notes, please submit a note to the observation page of our website.

Eric Smith