First image cropped and colour adjusted by Adobe Photoshop CS5. Taken through the Apogee 80 on the SkyWatcher NEQ6 mount, sidereal tracking but unguided for 30sec @ISO 1600 in-camera JPEG with no in-camera dark and with no light pollution filter or field flattener. 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! Things to note in the processed image are the level of noise in the background and hot red and blue pixels. The cropping has avoided the spherical aberration from the outer edges of the original image but shows via the stars that it was not quite focused. It shows hints to the extent of the nebulosity of M8 and that the NEQ6 tracks pretty well unguided for this duration. Also see the unprocessed image. Telescope - Apogee OrthoStar LOMO 80/480 without Field Flattener or light pollution filter, Canon 400D DSLR, Ambient xxC not noted. Mount - SkyWatcher NEQ6 Pro. Unguided. (Prime focus)
First image, as it came out of the camera, through the Apogee 80 on the SkyWatcher NEQ6 mount, sidereal tracking but unguided for 30sec @ISO 1600 in-camera JPEG with no in-camera dark and with no light pollution filter or field flattener. 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! Things to note are the reddish brown background caused by light pollution, not quite focused and spherical aberration at the outer third and corners of the image. It however shows the nebulosity of M8 and that the NEQ6 tracks pretty well unguided for this duration. As my first deep sky photo for 30 years, this was pretty encouraging! Also see separate processed image. Telescope - Apogee OrthoStar LOMO 80/480 without Field Flattener or light pollution filter, Canon 400D DSLR, Ambient xxC not noted. Mount - SkyWatcher NEQ6 Pro. Unguided. (Prime focus)
One of the first images cropped and colour adjusted by Adobe Photoshop CS5. Taken through the Apogee 80 on the SkyWatcher NEQ6 mount, sidereal tracking but unguided for 30sec @ISO 1600 in-camera JPEG with no in-camera dark and with no light pollution filter or field flattener. Things to note in the processed image are the level of noise in the background and hot red and blue pixels. The cropping has avoided the spherical aberration from the outer edges of the original image but shows via the stars that it was not quite focused. It clearly shows the three dust lanes of the emission nebula and that the NEQ6 tracks pretty well unguided for this duration. Also see the unprocessed image. Telescope - Apogee OrthoStar LOMO 80/480 without Field Flattener or light polution filter, Canon 400D DSLR, Ambient xxC not noted. Mount - Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro. Unguided. (Prime focus)
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