Loosely inspired by Van Gogh's famous still life painting - "Sunflowers" and a nice APOD from way back 2007 here we have the Sagittarius triplet in glorious post impressionistic (or maybe post apocalyptic?) narrowband.
I've had a go at all three of these individually, (and it took 7 attempts to get a result of M20 that I was happy with happy with but let's not go there...) but I always wanted to have a crack at these guys together, so with the new SV70T it's widefield FOV allows me to play a lot more with composition, and to get a sense of scale of how these objects sit together in space.
Taken from my now very damp, light polluted suburban backyard during May in Melbourne.
Data gathered over 5 nights totalling approximately 20 hrs exposure in all 20min subs. 7 Hrs Ha, & 8 hrs S2 and 5 hrs O3 (All 5nm Astrodon filters) with RGB stars, 15 x 1min R,G & B.
Very tricky to process with the brightness range being extreme over these three objects.
I've spent a few days going back to this one to get what I hope is a pleasing result, although some may require some sunscreen after long exposure to this!
The M8 core and M20 are insanely bright, and NGC 6334 is very dim.
Some interesting fibre like strands of Ha and S2 are showing up near the Triffid, but I have deliberately held back the background brightness so these are not a distraction.
The surrounding area is rich in Ha and S2 so this needed to be toned down to emphasise the "flower vase" structure as the hero of the shot.
I wanted to "respect the light" but I had to compensate by dimming down certain areas for an overall pleasing aesthetic effect, without resorting to HDR (shudder).
Havn't seen too many Sagittarius triplets with this NB treatment and composition, so I hope you like it, thanks for looking!
HighRes
Here -
Cheers
Andy