Hi, Regina here!
Life-long avid astronomy (and Carl Sagan!) enthusiast, now living in beautiful Ivins, UT, near very dark sky sites.
The recent article on the amazing James Webb Space Telescope imagery of the TOP of the Horsehead nebula has affected me, and my husband, Stephen, deeply. See:
You see, we had a hobby amateur website focused around the Horsehead nebula, which had been online since c.2005; but events over the recent year have discouraged us: war, conflict, bad weather! We finally took it offline last January, perturbed that the astro forums we viewed had next to NO new posts about amateur observing.
But, we decided that if the public was still interested in the amazing Horsehead, which we’ve been studying and viewing for a generation (!) that perhaps we’d return just the part of the old, large site devoted to the fabulous dark cloud, officially called “B 33”. At least, if you need a bit of distraction from the daily ‘bad news’, perhaps this might capture your attention for a while. For we discovered, back in 1989, that the world had completely forgotten that this iconic nebula was one of the first such objects to be discovered by a woman astronomer. In cooperation with Lick Observatory, the University of California, and Harvard (and various PhD. astronomers who aided us) we were able to get ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS of the discovery, early history, and FIRST photos! Our work initially came to light when my husband’s paper, in collaboration with Harvard College Observatory’s professor – their Curator of Historic Photographs – was professionally published; then, the forgotten history came to light, eventually trickling all the way down to Google, Wikipedia, etc. We were so proud, as private amateur astronomers, to have helped bring this to light in modern times!
Our site is purely for hobbyists like ourselves; is non-commercial; collects NO data; doesn’t SPAM; does nothing objectionable nor in disservice to community standards; it’s pure science history, and our findings about techniques to view it in a home telescope.
I don’t know if I’m permitted to give its new URL; but with your permission, it is here:
http://www.reginacelestial.byethost16.com
We put it up (again) only this week, just in time for the next New Moon. Enjoy!
Regina