p.1 #1 · Eagle Nebula and Surroundings in Narrowband
Here is a very familiar target, made famous by the Hubble Telescope 'Pillars of Creation' image. The area depicted in that famous image can be seen in the central portion of this image, obviously at a much reduced quality and scale. This is a narrowband image, made using Hα, OIII, and SII filters to pass only very specific wavelengths of light. The star fields thoough were imaged separately with standard RGB filtering to produce naturally colored stars for this image. The image was made from a number of subexposures that totalled just a little over 13 hours of total integration time, from moderately dark skies in Southern New Mexico, USA.
Here are the specific gear and collection details for those interested:
Equipment:
ZWO ASI1600MM-C Camera @ -20C and
Gain:200 Offset:50
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8
Innovations Foresight ONAG
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
Innovations Foresight SkyGuard
Light Frames:
Ha - 46 x 360 secs ( 4 hrs 36 mins)
OIII - 40 x 360 secs (4 hrs)
SII - 43 x 360 secs (4 hrs and 18 mins)
Red: 7 x 30 secs 3 mins 30 secs)
Green: 4 x 30 secs (3 mins 30 secs)
Blue: 7 x 30 secs (3 mins 30 secs)
13 hrs 4 mins 30 secs total
Dark Frames:
10 x 60 secs (20 mins)
Bias Frames
60
Flat Frames
20 each filter
All comments and any critiques most welcome
ML
Eagle Nebula, M16, In Narrowband Modified SHO Palette
p.1 #3 · Eagle Nebula and Surroundings in Narrowband
AZHeaven,
Thank you, I was very happy with how it came out. I was not expecting all the cool nebulosity around the central part of the nebula when I originally decided to target this area of the sky.
p.1 #4 · Eagle Nebula and Surroundings in Narrowband
Nice molecular clouds from which numerous new stars T-Tauri stars will come soon.
This nebula is the womb of birth of new generation stars. Well done successfully
p.1 #12 · Eagle Nebula and Surroundings in Narrowband
Thanks everyone! While 2020 sucked in most respects it was the year I managed to take my astrophotography to a new level. This is one of my favorites from the year. I do not have conditions conducive to astroimaging from my property (too many trees and some light pollution) but I was able to relocate my gear down to a friend's 2nd house on southern AZ and then remote control it all from here in CO. I ended up getting as much data in one year as I had been able to get in the entire 10 years prior. Pretty cool. That allowed me to spend lots more imaging time on a single object, like this one here.
Mark,
it is printed on metal at 20 x 30 and hanging in the living room. I am pretty happy with metal printing - but tell me more about the Lumachrome HD process!
p.1 #13 · Eagle Nebula and Surroundings in Narrowband
JustSteve,
Astroimaging is very fun and it has been positively revolutionized by digital sensors. It is easy to start getting some bright stuff with simpler gear, and in fact it is good to start slow as there are products out there that shall we say 'overpromise on what they can deliver' to put it politely . So easy to spend too much money on something when you are starting out only to realize later that you should have purchased something else.
Drop me a PM if you are interested and I will give you some more in depth references for how to start learning about the hobby. Who would think taking images of objects that do not visibly change in our lifetimes and that have already been imaged many multiple times before could be so compelling - but it is! Especially when you realize what you are truly capturing, ancient photons allowing you to see backwards in time, often millions of years!
p.1 #19 · Eagle Nebula and Surroundings in Narrowband
Absolutely stunningly beautiful image - so evocative and mysterious, with such detail, texture and depth in the molecular clouds. I teach high school Astronomy, and I'm showing this to my class next week. I think the fact that a regular person captured this in their "backyard" will be even more meaningful tto my students than an anonymous space telescope rendition. Thanks so much for sharing!
p.1 #20 · Eagle Nebula and Surroundings in Narrowband
Peterk78,
Well, that is pretty cool! I am honored that you will be able to use this in a classroom. If there is anything else I can do to help that cause drop me a PM and let me know.
