Horsehead Nebula

The Horsehead took 107 minutes of stacking before the familiar silhouette became clear. The small dark shape near the center-right is easy to lose when the photograph is cropped, but it is the whole reason I kept the telescope pointed at this patch of Orion.

The horse's head is Barnard 33, a cold cloud of gas and dust. It looks dark because it sits in front of the glowing hydrogen of IC 434, making the cloud visible as a silhouette rather than because it produces light of its own.

This is one of those targets that makes more sense in a photograph than at the eyepiece. The camera can keep collecting the faint red light until a shape hidden in the darkness finally becomes recognizable.