The Sagittarius star cloud and friends in HaRGB - 2 panel mosaic taken from my light polluted backyard in suburban Melbourne, Vic.
Kinda looks like an angel fish's face in profile.
Lots of interesting swirls of dark gas and dust, and sooooooo many stars!
This image also contains M24, IC 4715, M 18, NGC 6613, NGC 6603, IC 1284, NGC 6595, NGC 6590, NGC 6589, NGC 6568
M24 fills a space of significant volume to a depth of 10,000 to 16,000 light-years.
This is the most dense concentration of individual stars visible using binoculars, with around 1,000 stars visible within a single field of view.
The star cloud incorporates two prominent dark nebulae which are vast clouds of dense, obscuring interstellar dust. This dust blocks light from the more distant stars, which keeps them from being seen from Earth. Barnard 92, which is the darkest out of the two. Inside the field filled with stars, the nebula appears as an immense round hole that is devoid of any stars. American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard discovered this dark nebula in 1913. (there you go Mike S
)
The image also contains Barnard 93, which is less obvious and large as the other dark nebula. There are also other dark nebulae within M24, including Barnard 304 and Barnard 307. Both Barnard 92 and 93 have the most significant features shown in M24 due to them both blocking out several stars and being the most visually prominent. (wiki)
Hat's off to all who attempt RGB under LP - it's hard to process out those gradients!
Was keen to highlight the abundant Ha present, and these are my deepest stars to date, 45 x 120 secs each RG&B = 90 mins ea. in an attempt to overcome signal to LP ratio.
Worked ok - but might have to go even deeper in blue next time though, as those subtle little blue reflection nebulas were difficult to render under my LP conditions.
High Res
HERE - C&C welcome