The Eagle Nebula Ha Lum RGB

This is Messier 16, The Eagle Nebula, a well know target just south of the ecliptic. It is approximately 5700 light-years away, and lies in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way.

 

This is a bit of an experiment on my part. I wanted to reveal some of the subtle details contained within the narrowband Ha filter data, and present an image with a palette close to a traditional RGB image. In a conventional RGB image, M16 is very red across the entire image, but there are some nice blues from the OIII emissions. I find star colours are interesting in astronomical images. There is almost a radial extinction of star colour as you move from the outer regions of the image towards the very bright central portion of the picture. That's very cool indeed. They must be very hot and bright in that area.

 

Full resolution: live.staticflickr.com/65535/51660604759_90d4272e4b_o.jpg

 

 

Exposure Details:

Ha 18X600 Bin 1X1

Lum 57X600 Bin 1X1

Red 18X450 Bin 2X2

Green 18X450 Bin 2X2

Blue 16X450 Bin 2X2

 

TIme 19 Hours

 

Instruments

Telescope: 10" Ritchey-Chrétien RCOS

Camera: SBIG STL-11000 Mono

Mount: Astro-Physics AP-900

Focal Length: 2310.00 mm

Pixel size: 9.00 um

Resolution: 0.82 arcsec/pix

 

Thank you for looking

Done