M16, The Eagle Nebula
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M16, The Eagle Nebula
M16, The Eagle Nebula in Serpens Caput, is where the famous "Pillars of Creation" live. Can you see where they are, above? See the Hubble APOD of M16 here.
Above: Reprocessed in 2009, this time using just the 4.3 hr DSLR exposures from 2007. This time I used the ImagesPlus Star Size and Halo Reduction feature to shrink the stars, reprocessed, and cropped. My standard and advanced image processing techniques were used.
M16 So Far: Ninety-Six Frames, 6.4 hours total exposure
The above adds 65x4 = 260 minutes (4 1/3) hours to the image below. The latest shots used the Takahashi field flattener. All the pictures from Sept. 2007 trip are here.
Prime Focus New Frames: shots from the HAS site near Columbus night of 8/11/2007.: ~23x4min = 92 minutes exposure at 800 ISO. Temps were around 79 F most this night, which is a major disadvantage when using my uncooled DSLR. Object was low in the sky once again. Canon EOS 20Da (unmodified), ISO , Takahashi TOA 130 (a 5" APO refractor), and Astro-Physics AP 900GTO mount. The image above was composed of new images as described, plus the DSLR images described below..
M16, The Eagle Nebula in Serpens Caput
5/19/2004, Davis Mountains, TX
45 minute exposure, STV auto guider
Losmandy GM-11
Olympus OM 1n camera, Takahashi F102 telescope with reducer, Kodak LE 400 film
Negative Scan, Nikon Coolscan IV ED, Processed in Photoshop; NEAT image noise reduction with some selective gaussian blur applied in the blue channel.
Notes: This is about a 50% crop of the full frame, resized to 800 pixels wide. I apparently didn't have the EQ head locked securely locked to the tripod this night, as the next night I was able to shoot I discovered that it was loose. I'm not sure if this contributed the the slightly out-of-round stars. I would have liked to go a bit longer on this exposure, but clouds rolled in at 4:00 a.m. and sent me off to bed. This is where the famous "pillars of creation" image from the Hubble is from; they zoomed in on the detail that's hinted at in this image..
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