Toes of the Hoof - in Sagittarius

[RobF]

After many goes at M8/M20 in the past, thought it was time to try and do justice to the regions at the tip of M8 (IC 1274, IC 1275, IC 4685, NGC 6559, etc).

This is LRGB collected over a few darks nights from regional SE Qld. First serious outing of NINA in the field and it performed very nicely, even around a couple of frustrating hardware issues.

5min subs, LRGB 75:115:85:110 mins, for a total integration time around 6.5 hours.
(FSQ106ED/HEQ5Pro/QHY9)

Playing around with the data in PI its fascinating just how much dust winds its way through this area. Messing about with contrast and scale settings you can see there are "pools" of massive dark clouds, all the way down to finer tendrils here and there. Will leave to the creative types to spot animals etc in the dust lanes.

Larger (zoomable) JPG also available here (https://photos.app.goo.gl/6qdPBFB6zJRZzeuF6).
Thanks for looking.

[peter_4059]

Looking good Rob. It's a nice colourful part of the sky with plenty to take in. Good to hear NINA is working out for you.

[RobF]

Thanks for the recent couragement to fire it up and check out the latest software options Peter. NINA definitely looking very promising. Really only fired up SGP to review some images (not smart to figure out if/how you do that in NINA) and didn't have PI installed on the laptop, plus troubleshoot some focuser connection problems.

Found myself deep into PI research yet again, reading Rogelio's excellent books and getting my head around newer stuff like Starnet.

These 5 days away will have to be the replacement for Astrofest this year :(
At least got a few nights of clear dark sky :)

[Andy01]

Well done, nice colours & a pleasant journey for the eye down the long dust river. :thumbsup:

[RobF]

Thanks Andy. You real photographers make it look too easy. I'm generally pretty rubbish at composition, but liked how the dark lane worked out in the end :)