The River of Stars

Despite being in Messier catalog, the Sagittarius Star Cloud - Messier 24, is an often overlooked target for astrophotographers. However, it is a beautiful concentration of stars at about 10,000 light years from us, located in the Sagittarius arm of our galaxy. During the shooting of this photo, I had the chance of observing it with a regular binocular and it is amazing the sheer amount of stars that can be seen.

 

In my eyes, it looks like a river of stars flowing in the sky but actually, it is a patch of stars peeking behind the dark dust lanes of our galaxy. Should those lanes not exist, all our galaxy would look the same.

 

Undoubtedly one of the targets I most enjoyed shooting and I hope you enjoy the final result.

 

Shot at Santa Susana, Portugal on June 25th, 2022

 

Technical details:

RGB: 3 x 33 x 180s (5h00), BIN1

Telescope: TS Optics Triplet APO 800/115

Camera: QHYCCD 268M

Mount: Skywatcher AZ EQ5-GT

Filters: Optolong LRGB

Reducer: TSOptics TSFLAT 3’ 0.79x

Acquisition: N.I.N.A. and RBFocus Gaius-S

Processing: Pixinsight, Photoshop

 

Done