Lagoon Nebula (M8) - modded DSLR

[glowingturnip]

Slowly working through my summer crop of data - here's my latest:

Please click through on the image for a higher res version.

13x 300s (3 at ISO1600, 9 at ISO800), darks, flats and bias, kit as per sig, DSLR at prime focus, Pixinsight.

Conditions weren't ideal hence I only got 13 subs - there were a few scattered fluffy clouds around, though it was clear in between so obvious which subs were affected, and due to time of year and position of an annoying hillside it was setting fairly early for me.  Still, as a target it's so bright I don't think it suffered much from lack of data - actually I noticed that after the first 3 subs came in, at ISO1600, that the red channel looked like it was clipping, so dropped it to ISO800 for the rest of the run.

The Lagoon Nebula (M8, NGC 6523) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as a H II region. In the foreground is the open cluster NGC 6530.

The Lagoon Nebula is estimated to be between 4,000-6,000 light years from the Earth and measures 110 by 50 light years.

The nebula contains a number of Bok globules (dark, collapsing clouds of protostellar material), the most prominent of which have been catalogued as B88, B89 and B296. It also includes a funnel-like or tornado-like structure caused by a hot O-type star that emanates ultraviolet light, heating and ionizing gases on the surface of the nebula.

The Lagoon Nebula also contains at its centre a structure known as the Hourglass Nebula (the densest part). In 2006 the first four Herbig–Haro objects were detected within the Hourglass.

Just for a laugh, here's the same target I took last year.  I guess I'm improving !

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice images. The new is certainly an improvement

[toxic]

very nice indeed Stuart great image.

[laudropb]

Lovely image and certainly an improvement. Thanks for posting.

[MarsG76]

Fantastic image.... definitely a major improvement over the last years image... I too am a DSLR astroimager.. its amazing the kinds of images possible with DSLRs.

[glowingturnip]

thanks all  

[Stardust]

great image with a real sense of it glowing

[glowingturnip]

I've given this one a bit of a reprocess as I wasn't happy with some of the star bloating I'd gotten,  I went through it again paying closer attention to appropriate masking and de-ringing at each step (ok, and I did a bit of a morph transform on the stars too).

I've beefed up the cloud and the colours a bit too,  hope you like.

[julianr]

Reprocess looks good

Sent from my SM-G900F using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2

[WaveSoarer]

That's excellent work. I really like your latest image.