Messier 8 - The Lagoon Nebula
Date: June 25, 2020
Cosgrove’s Cosmos Catalog ➤#0036
Messier 8 - The Lagoon Nebula (click to enlarge)
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About the Target
Messier 8, also known as the Lagoon Nebula, is a giant interstellar cloud located in the constellation Sagittarius and is 4000-6000 light-years away. This is a rich star-forming region - in fact, it is one of the two such regions that are bright enough to be seen with the naked eye under dark skies.
This region is about 110 by 50 light-years in size.
In binoculars or a small telescope, the nebulae appear gray. This is because it is still very faint, and your eye depends on its rods rather than its cones for seeing this object. Rods have no color receptors, thus the gray coloration is seen. However, with longer exposure, we can see the red color of HII emission - the gas is excited by the blue light from the recently formed stars and emits in a deep red, as seen here.
There are also a group of dark nodules that can be seen, and these are listed as separate Bernard objects.
The Annotated Image
Annotated image of Messier 8 - done with Pixinsight ImageSolve and AnnotateImage Scripts.
My first image was of M8 (Click to enlarge)
About the Project
This is a very bright target in a very rich portion of the sky. In fact, my first AstroPhoto ever was of this object. A year later I am revisiting this target to see what I can do with it.
I am pretty happy with the results!
This image resulted from 47 x 180 captures.
You can see the posting of my first effort HERE.
The Location in the Sky
IAU/Sky & Telescope Constellation Map for Sagittarius - Messier 8 is indicated with the yellow arrow.
More Information
Wikipedia Entry: Messier 8
NASA: Hubble Telescope Images of portions of M8
The Live Sky: Messier 8
Capture Details
Light Frames
Taken on the night of June 14th, 2020
47 x 180 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain,
Total of 2.35 hours
Cal Frames
Not recorded.
Capture Hardware
Scope: William Optics 132mm f/7.0 FLT APO
Guide Scope: Sharpstar 61EDPHII
Camera: ZWO ASI1600mm-pro with ZWO Filter wheel with ZWO LRGB filter set,
and Astronomiks 6nm Narrowband filter set
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini
Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2
Camera Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon
Mount: Ioptron CEM60
Polar Alignment: Polemaster camera
Click below to visit post about the Telescope version used for this image
Software
Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller
Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop - assisted by Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, editor regret, and much swearing….. Given the problems on this image, more than the usual whining….
During August and September I was out shooting every clear night. I had learned a lot of things but I was also noticing several issues that were causing me problems as I did more imaging. I decided to do something to address those issues….