Lagoon Nebula
Messier 8
Bi-colour
The lagoon nebula is a star forming region around 4,100 light year away in the constellation of Sagittarius. The nebula is so large it is faintly visible to the naked eye as a ghostly cloud patch.
The open star cluster NGC 6530 is in the foreground of the nebula. Many Bok globules are seen in the image which are clouds of cold, black material, which will one day will form new stars.
At the heart of the Lagoon nebula contains the bright Hourglass nebula. When photographing bright nebula in long exposure photographs, images can become quickly over-exposed. Either shorter exposure lengths or careful use of processing must be used to control the brightness the nebula.
As always constructive criticism always welcome
Exposure details:
Telescope used: GSO RC 10
Native Focal length: 2000mm w/ Astrophysics 0.67x focal reducer. Focal Length reduced to 1340mm.
Camera: QSI 683 WSG w/ Lodestar for OAG (off axis guiding) Maxim DL used was used for auto-guiding.
Camera Temperature: -20 degrees
Camera filters & exposure time:
1.25" Baader Hydrogen Alpha 7x15 minutes exposure (Total exposure time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Hydrogen added to Red colour channel
1.25" Baader Oxygen III 7x15 minutes exposure (Total exposure time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Oxygen added to Green and Blue colour channels.
Mount: Losmandy G-11 w/ Gemini 2
Other details.
Due to a terrible run of weather I was unable to collect any more subs for the final stack of images. I was also planing to capture some broadband RGB to get some colour back into my stars which are washed out due to the long sub exposures I used.
Image has been processed using Photoshop CS5 with basic processing techniques. Layer making has been used to control the central core brightness of the nebula and a high pass filter has been applied to sharpen up the nebulas features.
Image has also been cropped from original size and turned clockwise 90 degrees.
