From time to time, we all need a little guidance

Alnitak, the Flame Nebula and the Horsehead Nebula: From our backyard: Meade 127mm. Apo refractor, Altair-astro field flattener and 0.8x reducer, imaging camera Canon 600D SDSLR, all on a NEQ6 PRO mount guided with a QHY5-11 camera. 10x3min lights and 3x3min darks at ISO800

Alnitak  is a multiple star several hundred parsecs(approx 1250 light years or 1,1762,000,000,000,000 kilometres away) in the constellation Orion.  It is part of Orion's Belt along with Alnilam and Mintaka, and has a Bayer designation of Zeta Orionis (ζ Ori) and a Flamsteed designation of 50 Orionis.
The primary star is a hot blue supergiant with an absolute magnitude of -6.0 and is the brightest class O star in the night sky with a visual magnitude of +2.0. It has two bluish 4th magnitude companions, one finely resolved and one only detected interferometrically and spectroscopically, producing a combined magnitude for the trio of +1.77.  I was pleased that my telescope camera set up could resolve one of the two bluish companion stars which you can see clearly in the above image just to the left of Alnitak at 9 o'clock. The stars are members of the Orion OB1 association and the Collinder 70 association.

The Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277, is an emission nebula  It is about 900 to 1,500 light-years away.
The bright star Alnitak (ζ Ori), the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion, shines energetic ultraviolet light into the Flame and this knocks electrons away from the great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there. Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionized hydrogen recombine and release photons. Additional dark gas and dust lies in front of the bright part of the nebula and this is what causes the dark network that appears in the center of the glowing gas. The Flame Nebula is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region that includes the famous Horsehead Nebula.
At the center of the Flame Nebula is a cluster of newly formed stars, 86% of which have circumstellar disks^. X-ray observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory show several hundred young stars, out of an estimated population of 800 stars.  X-ray and infrared images indicate that the youngest stars are concentrated near the center of the cluster^.

The Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33, is a dark cloud of dust and gas within the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, where star formation is taking place. This stellar nursery, as it is known, can contain over 100 known kinds of organic and inorganic gases as well as dust; some of the latter is made up of large and complex organic molecules.
The red or pinkish glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. Magnetic fields channel the gases leaving the nebula into streams, shown as streaks in the background glow. A glowing strip of hydrogen gas marks the edge of the massive cloud, and the densities of nearby stars are noticeably different on either side
The heavy concentrations of dust in the Horsehead Nebula region and neighbouring Orion Nebula are localized, resulting in alternating sections of nearly complete opacity and transparency. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust blocking the light of stars behind it. The lower part of the Horsehead's neck casts a shadow to the left.  The visible dark nebula emerging from the gaseous complex is an active site of the formation of "low-mass" stars. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula's base are young stars just in the process of forming.

The above image is my first attempt at long exposure astro-photography using my new acquired QHY5-11 planetary and guide camera. Thanks to Stark Labs for the excellent freeware 'PHD2 Guiding' which made this possible. Thanks also to Olly Penrice for the demonstration last year of the process involved and to Toot for sanctioning the purchase of the camera.  As they say "my cup runneth over".

I did have a moment of panic when suddenly the guide camera lost the guide star. "oh no", had my new camera stopped working on its debut evening?  Had the mind numbing cold of  a raw Lowestoft night drained the number crunching capacity of my frost covered Dell laptop?  None of the above.

Instead, as the earth spun on its axis, the guide star had apparently dropped below the roof of my house! 

I finished the night taking some videos of the planet Jupiter and went to bed at about 3.00am on the 11th February, a tired but happy old man. 

Two of my images of Jupiter taken just after 1.00am on the 11th February 2016 .127mm Meade Apo- refractor with 2.5x Barlow lens and QHY5-11 planetary camera. The atmosphere was not particularly steady so images not as sharp as might be on a better night.

Credits: Wikipedia for written information.