Messier Objects
I highly recommend a book on Charles Messier and the creation of this catalogue - Atlas of Messier Objects, 2008 by Ronald Stoyan.
Note: This gallery should be automatically sorted by Messier #.
Messier M8 - NGC6523 - Gum 72 - Lagoon Nebula and Cluster - 7/5/2011 (Re-processed cropped stack)
Reprocessed late 2012.
The Lagoon Nebula is a giant interstellar cloud ~4100 LY away in the constellation Sagittarius. The pink/red glow is caused by ionised Hydrogen gas. The ionisation comes from extremely bright young stars with high Ultraviolet light output. M8 is just visible to the naked eye in dark skies and easily seen in binoculars. It spans 90' x 40' which is ~3 x 1 full moon diameters and at its distance equates to 110 x 50 LY. Imagine the energy required to light that up!
DeepSkyStacker 3.3.2 Stacked 80% of 16 Images ISO 800 240 Sec, 20 DARK, 0 BIAS, 0 FLATS, Post processing by Adobe Photshop CS5
Telescope - Apogee OrthoStar LOMO 80/480 with Hotech SCA Field Flattener, NO filter, Canon 400D DSLR, Ambient 13C. Mount - Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro. Guidescope - Orion ShortTube 80 with Star Shoot Auto Guider
messierm8 lagoon nebula and clusterngcngc6523 m8 lagoon nebula and clustergalactic nebulaopen clustergumgum72
