Through manual processing in PixInsight, the dark dust lanes emerge, silhouetted against the glowing background of the Orion Molecular Cloud.
I’ve been pushing myself this season to explore targets well outside my comfort zone, so when the Singularity app suggested I point my Vespera at something challenging, I went for it — a manual target of LDN 1622, also known as the Boogeyman Nebula. Unlike bright emission nebulae that glow with vivid color, dark nebulae like this don’t emit much light at all. Instead, we see them because their dense clouds of dust and gas block light from stars and glowing gas behind them, creating eerie silhouettes against the backdrop of the Milky Way. (Galactic Hunter)
LDN 1622 lies in the constellation Orion, tucked near iconic features like Barnard’s Loop and Messier 78, though it’s much fainter and harder to detect without deep, processed imaging. (Astronomy Picture of the Day) The shape of this dark nebula has inspired its nickname — some see the outline of a mythical boogeyman figure in the dusty contours — and its roughly 10-light-year span makes it a relatively small member of the Orion complex. (Galactic Hunter)
This object isn’t easily spotted in a single shot — its details only emerge after stacking long exposures and coaxing out subtle contrast in PixInsight. Before I learned how to manually process data, dark nebulae like this were discouragingly blank in my frames. Now, careful calibration, stretching, and masking reveal structure where once there was only darkness.
Below you’ll find:
- the original image straight from the telescope before preprocessing,
- the post-processed result from PixInsight,
- an overlay showing my manual target coordinates,
- an annotated version highlighting features, and
- a finding chart to help you locate LDN 1622 in the sky.
- Unexpected Visitor: Asteroid 787 Moskva
While reviewing my data, I noticed a streak crossing the frame — a classic sign of a minor planet passing through during the exposure sequence. With help from Susan Fortnay and the Stellarium app, I was able to identify the object as (787) Moskva, a minor planet in the main asteroid belt. (Wikipedia)
787 Moskva was discovered on 20 April 1914 by Russian astronomer Grigory Neujmin at the Simeis Observatory and named after the city of Moscow (Moskva). It’s classified as an S-type (stony) asteroid with a diameter of about 27 km, composed mostly of silicate minerals and metals typical of this spectral class. (Wikipedia)
Moskva completes an orbit around the Sun roughly every 4.05 years, and photometric observations have measured its rotation period at about 6.056 hours — meaning this rock spins on its axis nearly four times every Earth day. (Wikipedia)
One neat thing about asteroids like Moskva is that amateur and professional observations of their lightcurves can be used to model their shapes and rotational dynamics, giving us insight into their physical properties far beyond just size and orbit — a reminder that even serendipitous “photobombs” can contain scientific value.
