Derby and District Astronomical Society



NGC 2024
The Flame Nebula

Emission Nebula in Orion      RA 05h 41m 54s  Dec -01° 51m 00s

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Dave Selfe captured the following wide field image of the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae on the 26th February 2022. The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 22) appears as the dark notch in the red streak of the emission nebula IC434, below the bright star Alnitak at the left of the image. The Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) is visble next to Alnitak in the 10 o'clock position relative to that star. Alnitak is the left-most star of Orion's belt as seen from the northern hemisphere. The middle star of the belt, Alnilam, is also visible in the upper right quadrant of this image. Dave used a Nikon D750 camera with an Optolong L-eNhance filter through a Skywatcher Esprit 100ED telescope. The image comprises 81 x 30s exposures at ISO 800.  Image © Dave Selfe.




Separate images of NGC 2024 and IC 434 were captured by Peter Branson on January 20th and 21st 2022, and comprise 86 minutes of total exposures of NGC 2024 and 80 minutes in total for IC 434. The camera used was a ZWO ASI533 cooled colour camera together with a 102mm TS Optics Photoline f7 telescope with a Hutech IDAS light pollution filter and field flattener attached mounted on an NEQ6 mount. A filter wheel fitted with LRGBHa filters was used to capture both L and extra Ha for both images. The two square frame images were combined in Microsoft Images Composite Editor (ICE). Peter says - "One of my challenges this winter is to get some decent images of parts of the Orion Nebula. I'm experimenting with my new ASI533 camera and, although it's a colour camera, I've been taking images through an L filter and an Ha so that I can add extra Ha detail to the images if necessary. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Microsoft ICE produced this lovely panoramic view when they were combined."  Image © Peter Branson.




The following image of NGC2024 The Flame Nebula and IC434 The Horsehead Nebula was created with data taken by Chris Callaway on the 10th, 12th and 25th February 2021 from Coalville. The image comprises 17 x 5 minute subs of Ha and 16 x 5 minute subs of Oiii and Sii. Equipment was a Takahashi 106, the camera was an Atik 16200 with Atik filter wheel and filters, the mount was a Paramount MyT. The images were stacked in Astroart with further processing taking place in Photoshop. Ha was assigned to Red, Oiii to Green and Sii to Blue.  Image © Chris Callaway.




Peter Branson took this image of the Flame Nebula on the 10th January 2015. It is made up from sixteen 2 minute images taken with an ATIK 314L+ colour CCD camera attached to TS Photoline ED102 refractor telescope with field-flattener and Hutech IDAS light pollution filter attached. The telescope was guided using an Orion Mini autoguider controlled by PHD software. The images were stacked and further processed with curves and levels in Nebulosity.  Image © Peter Branson.




The Flame Nebula lies to lower left of this image of the Horsehead Nebula by Peter Branson, captured on the 21st February 2014. The picture is made up of 9 separate images of 150 seconds each, all taken at ISO 1600. The images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and then the final image processed in GimpShop. The separate images were taken with a Canon 1100D attached to TS Photoline ED102 refractor telescope with field-flattener and Hutech IDAS light pollution filter attached. The telescope was guided using an Orion Mini autoguider controlled by PHD software.  Image © Peter Branson.




Mike Lancaster captured this image of The Flame Nebula on the 20th February 2014. It is a stack of six frames of 90 seconds each taken with a Mallincam Xtreme X2 camera at AGC 5 using an MFR5 focal reducer and Astronomik CLS-CCD filter through a 10" Meade LX200 ACF SCT. No guiding was employed. The images were stacked, cropped and processed in Nebulosity v3 with further processing using Photoshop Elements and Astronomy Tools.  Image © Mike Lancaster.



This image shows the Horsehead Nebula at upper right with the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) at left. It was taken by Adrian Brown during January and February 2012 and he comments that it was supposed to be a colour image but at the time he only managed to collect the red filtered data. It is comprised of sixty exposures of 6 minutes each taken with his Skywatcher 80EDPro refractor, an ATIK ATK16HR camera and Astronomik red and CLS light pollution filters.  Image © Adrian Brown.





Adrian Brown took the following image of a region of Orion which contains the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) as well as the famous Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33). The Flame Nebula lies just below the bright star Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) to the lower left of centre in this picture. Alnitak is the leftmost star in Orion's Belt as seen from the northern hemisphere. The bright star in the upper left corner of the picture is Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis) - the middle star of Orion's belt. Hence north is to the left in this picture and we are actually seeing Orion on its side in this view. NGC 2024 has a dark tree-like structure of dust lanes superimposed against it. This earns NGC 2024 its other name of The Christmas Tree Nebula. The Horsehead Nebula lies in the middle of the picture and is silhouetted against the emission nebula IC 434. Adrian took this picture during the early hours of Friday, 4th November 2005. It was created from 2 hours and 20 minutes of exposure (14 x 10min) taken with an ATK-16HR CCD camera, an Astronomik 13nm Hydrogen-Alpha filter and Chris Newsome's Vivitar 75-205mm f/3.5 zoom lens which was set to 135mm and f/5.6.  Image © Adrian Brown.




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