M16 - No, it's not a Chicken Hawk, it's an Eagle!!

[cybereye]

Hello everyone!

Well I've been waiting 2 years to re-image this baby and I finally managed to find the time last night.

Despite the smoke from burn-offs in and around Brisbane I was happy enough with what I was seeing to continue with the imaging of M16. This image has the usual for my imaging - 8" newt with a QHY8L, Baader MPCC and a Baader UHC-S filter. Guiding with a QHY5 on an Orion ST80 using PHD Guiding. 29 x 5 minute subs, darks, flats and dark flats. Stacking in DSS, processing in StarTools and tarting up in GIMP.

It's not as sharp as I would have liked but I'm still happy with the result - so here it is, my rendition of The Eagle Nebula (http://astrob.in/16898/)

Cheers,
Mario

[astronobob]

Looks good Mario,

[marco]

Hi Mario, you have some good fine details there. I would pay more attention to the background, it seems you somewhere clipped some light setting the black level too low. I noticed that generally speaking you have a very dark setting on most of your images.
I don't know if your monitor is calibrated, if not I found long ago that investing in a monitor calibrator really boosted the quality of my results, I realized that what I was seeing was not I actually was getting.. I would strongly recommend you one (eyeone, spider3 etc) if you have not already.


Clear skies
Marco

[Poita]

I love the colour and details, but too dark on my calibrated monitor as well.

I'm struggling with chimney-smoke locally as well, it is annoying!

[Ross G]

Nice photo Mario.

I like the colour.

Ross.