The Eagle & the Nested Egg Nebulas

[Andy01]

Like a soaring eagle rising up to an egg in it's nest, here we have the famous M16 Eagle, soaring up past open cluster NGC 6604 towards Sh2-54 top right.

The bright nebula within is Gum-85. The ring around it is Gum-84.
Together, they are called the "nested egg" nebula. (well maybe, I read that somewhere anyway)

The cluster below is NGC6604. M16 is of course bottom of frame.

High res HERE (http://www.astrobin.com/full/255908/0/)

11x1800 secs 5nm Ha with the QSI on the Stellarvue SV70T

I'll have a crack at full NB on this when the skies clear again. :D

[pfitzgerald]

Nice work Andy

Gum 85 is one of my favourite nebulae (no prizes for guessing why! ;-) )

Looking forward to seeing your final NB image.

Paul

[Atmos]

I was expecting there to be more Ha around the lower left, guess not :P
Really nice image though! Out of curiosity, do you drizzle your data, at your image scale you should easily be able to :)

You get such a nice FOV with that 70mm! Looking forward to a full NB :)

[Placidus]

Andy you are to be again congratulated for successfully tackling the road less traveled, this time with the Eagle as context.

It will be of great interest to learn whether the region at top right is of sufficient violence to show much OIII. We eagerly await your results.

Edit: Found an image on Astronomy Forum. Trying to post a link to it told me I'd exceeded my free view quota or some such. But there is some nice OIII.

[gregbradley]

An interesting framing I guess you decided against the M17/M16 duo.

Personally though I am not a fan of portrait orientation. That's just me despite my portrait orientation image getting an honourable mention at the Malin's.

Greg.

[Stevec35]

Looks good Andy. I think that composition will make a great NB image.

Cheers

Steve

[Andy01]

Thanks Paul, hopefully the weather won't keep you waiting too long :)



Hi Colin, No I havn't used drizzle - since you mentioned it, I looked it up and found this reference.

http://www.stark-labs.com/craig/resources/Articles-&-Reviews/Drizzle_API.pdf

Not sure if it will make a difference, but will give it a go next time & see :)



Hi M&T, thanks for your encouraging comments. I too found a reference image that showed some O3 in Sh2-54, so hopefully I can render that too. :)



Hi Greg, Yes thanks for your comments. :thumbsup:
I just wasn't inspired by my previous m16/17 framing, so I though I'd visit new territory instead (for me anyway).

Will review the orientation when this image is finished, but as I'm a portrait photographer by profession, this orientation is natural for me. :D

[strongmanmike]

That's a good start Andy and the framing is interesting, I like it :)

Mike

[Atmos]

It may not bring out more detail per se, that's hard to determine but it will give you much rounder and easier to process stars :) I usually drizzle myself while imaging at 1.4"/pixel and I find it helps. At 11 frames you should be okay but more is definitely better :)