Flame Nebula

For those familiar with the Old Testament (Exodus 3:2-4) or even the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza ("The Ten Commandments"), you may know the story of the "burning bush"...

In NGC 2024 -- aka the "Flame Nebula" -- the heavens have conjured up the celestial equivalent of a burning bush on a massive scale.

This image was assembled from 5.5 hours of Ha data, acquired in Chile, combined with old RGB data from Pennsylvania using Mazlin's FSQ/STL11k.

The initial stretches of the Ha data revealed horrendous halos, presumably from relfections off the CCD microlens to the back of the filter, then back down to the chip. We haven't seen these types of reflections before, but then again, we usually don't image with stars as bright as Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) in the field.