The Lagoon Nebula (catalogued as Messier 8 or M8, NGC 6523, Sharpless 25, RCW 146, and Gum 72) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region.
The Trifid Nebula (catalogued as Messier 20 or M20 and as NGC 6514) is an H II region in the north-west of Sagittarius in a star-forming region in a nearby spiral arm’s Scutum-centered part. It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764. Its name means ‘three-lobe’. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (a relatively dense, red-yellow portion), a reflection nebula (the mainly NNE blue portion), and a dark nebula (the apparent ‘gaps’ in the former that cause the trifurcated appearance also designated Barnard 85). Viewed through a small telescope, the Trifid Nebula is a bright and peculiar object, and is thus a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers.
Image:
Equipment/Software:
- Nikon D90
- Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer
- Star Adventurer tripod
- Sigma 300mm prime lens
- Bahintov Mask
- Intervalometer
- Laptop
- Stellarium
- Sharpcap
- All Sky Plate Solver
Acquisition:
- 174 x 2′ exposures (total just under 6 hours)
- 30 Darks
- 140 Bias
- 20 Flat
Processing:
- Stacked manually in pixinsight
- Crop to get rid of artifacts
- DBE
- Deconvolution
- Histogram strech
- MLT for denoise
- ArcsinH strech
- Starnet
- Some curves transformation
- Added stars back
Annotated image:
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