Been wanting to hit these three beauties for ever... and I finally got the chance last week
A classic grouping of bright nebulae in Sagittarius made up of the famous Lagoon Nebula (M8), the Trifid Nebula (M20) and the slightly fainter but no less beautiful, NGC 6559/IC1274 group, along with some threads of faint emission nebula spread around here and there. The golden star fields of the Milky Way complete the scene.
This is a LHaOIIIRGB broadband+narrowband hybrid image, processed as a true colour image and the near 7hrs of data was all collected in one night, of beautifully transparent skies.
I used no deconvolution and only a small amount of sharpening in the bright areas of the main nebulae and no noise reduction or gradient removal was used, pretty easy imaging. The bad news was, that I forgot my wallet, so no usual beers were purchased on the drive out to the observatory, nor any Macca's on the way home in the morning
DOH!
Sagittarius Trio (click on image and use your cursor to pan around)
Full frame full resolution version is
HERE
Hope you like it
Mike