The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula and The Spire) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745–46. Both the “Eagle” and the “Star Queen” refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula, an area made famous as the “Pillars of Creation” imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned Pillars of Creation.
Image:
Equipment/Software
- Astro-Modded Nikon D90
- Rokinon 135mm f2
- Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer
- Star Adventurer Tripod
- Bahintov Mask
- Intervalometer
- Dew Heater (New!!!)
- Laptop
- Sharpcap
- All Sky Plate Solver
- Stellarium
Acquisition
- 62 x 3′ light frames
- 200 flat frames
- 300 bias frames
- 50 dark frames
Processing
- Stacked manually in pixinsight
- Deconvolution
- John Rista Denoise
- Extract Luminance
- MaskedStrech on L and RGB, then starnet
- LRGB combine
- HDR Transform
- Local Histogram Equalization
- Added stars back
- Strong Star reduction
Annotated Image:
