IC 434 - The Horsehead Nebula
Though I had already imaged this object in November and early December, I took a final series of exposures over the final days of December, because, well, who can resist getting a better image of the famous object? The resulting image -- taken with the 6" Newtonian using the SSP camera -- is probably the best image of the nebula I have yet taken and certainly the best of 2014.
The above image is composed of 28, 200-second sub-exposures and 31, 180-second sub-exposures, for a total exposure time of just over three hours.
With this I saw goodbye to the Orion and the winter sky for this year, and turn my attention toward Leo, Ursa Major and the other spring constellations -- and their myriad galaxies and globular clusters -- that are now rising earlier and earlier in the eastern night sky.
