The Horsehead Nebula

Photograph by Jim Pollock

I first got interested in Astronomy at the age of 12 when I saved up my paper route money for my first "big purchase" of life: $199 in 1967 for a 6" reflector telescope from the back cover of Sky and Telescope Magazine. I will never forget a couple of months later when Saturn finally came into view from my house. That first look, seeing the rings live through an eyepiece. I knew I wanted to be an astronomer. I was in love with the romance of sitting on a mountain top looking through an eyepiece and picking up where Galileo left off. But, I soon discovered that nearly all new discoveries were by huge observatories with computer automated photography and hours upon hours of processing... only looking at seems of data, not ever setting foot in an observatory. So, I went into electrical engineering and kept astronomy as my hobby and passion. Now, over 50 years later, with breakthroughs in manufacturing and CCD and CMOS cameras, little old me can have a telescope thousands of times more powerful than Galileo ever dreamed of. And I can place my scope in a remote observatory in Nowhere Texas and control it from my iPad or iPhone. One of my first images was of my favorite object ever: The Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion. This image consists of 80 frames of 3-minutes each (4 hours of exposure) across 2 nights. The obvious focus is in the center: the Horsehead silhouetted against clouds of fiery red hydrogen. And the Burning Bush just to the left. I always enjoy reading about objects that I photograph, and I love the story behind the discovery of the Horsehead Nebula. Dr Edward Charles Pickering was the director of the Harvard Observatory where he setup a photographic survey capturing millions of glass prints of the heavens. He had a team of female "computers" who analyzed and cataloged the contents of the images. It was Williamina Fleming who actually discovered the Horsehead Nebula on one of these glass plates in 1888. She has become quite the hero to me and I've photographed several of the objects she discovered. But the Horsehead is quite special. And I know the brilliant red hydrogen clouds will really pop on metal!

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