[Greg Bock (Greg Bock)]

Hi Guys,
first time for everything i guess?
I haven't posted any colour pics onto IIS before, because I'm never really happy with them, and I'm usually too busy imaging galaxies and searching for supernova. However, I took a break from SN searching recently to get a close in image of the details of the Lagoon. (As it turned out, this was a bad idea as Peter Marples found his 5th supernova while I was in the middle of my imaging session to get M8!!)

The reason for imaging this well known area was to reveal the intricate details in the complex area around the Hourglass region (upper right) while retaining the delicate colour differences beween the gaseous filaments surrounding it, as well as the colour differences between the young cluster NGC6530 and the background stars. I also wanted to capture the structure of the 'Great Wall' at lower left at the same time.

A bright moon was near it over the 2 nights i captured the subframes, so contrast could be improved. Seeing was average both nights, so resolution could be also be improved.

Details are:
Meade LX200R, 14" using an Optec F7 focal reducer on a Losmandy G11, SBIG ST2000XM, binned 1x1, and about 50 x 1 minute subframes per colour for Ha, red, green, and blue.
More processing details and an example of a raw Ha are at posting 10 below.

Comments welcome.