Trifid Nebula (Messier 20, NGC 6514)

[johnfosteruk]

I'm working on a mosaic covering a region that I love in Sagittarius using Slooh's 17" F6.8 and SBIG ST-10XME at their El Teide observatory. I love their 20" telescope, but It suffers with the wind so quite often your sessions are either a wash out with streaky stars, or the dome doesn't even open for the evening (They're considering some sort of shutter setup to raise the observatory walls 10 degrees which will help mitigate the problem if they go ahead). 

I've not collected anywhere near enough data yet but none of the domes have been open for the last three nights due to weather (You can't even escape it in the Canary Islands!) so I've had a play with what data I've got on one of the panels.

The full mosaic will be 16x43' panels, covering the Trifid (M20), Lagoon, M8, M21, and the group of wee nebulae that sit to the west of the lagoon - IC6559, IC4685, IC1275 & IC1274. 

This is the Trifid, from 7x50s subs each in LRGB, processed with photoshop. I've done it a thousand different ways because I keep forgetting that I don't have enough data yet. i.e. I can pull out more of the lovely reflection nebula but I destroy the stars in doing so, and it really is hard to bring out the detail in these large sprawling nebulae and keep the background noise down. 

So, having done it a number of ways I've tried to combine the best of each. In the end I've kept the process simple, being concerned with colour rather than detail for now. I don't know if this is where the mosaic will go in the end but it's a start.

Now, it appears tonight is a washout too, I might have a go at the M8 data I've collected so far now.