The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula and The Spire) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745-46. Its name derives from its shape that is thought to resemble an eagle. It contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the famous "Pillars of Creation", photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Eagle Nebula is part of a diffuse emission nebula, or H II region, which is catalogued as IC 4703. This region of active current star formation is about 7000 light-years distant. A spire of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula in the northeastern part is approximately 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers long. The cluster associated with the nebula has approximately 460 stars, the brightest of spectral class O, a mass of roughly 80 solar masses, and a luminosity up to 1 million times that of the Sun. Its age has been estimated to be 1–2 million years.

The descriptive names reflect impressions of the shape of the central pillar rising from the southeast into the central luminous area. The name "Star Queen Nebula" was introduced by Robert Burnham, Jr., reflecting his characterization of the central pillar as the Star Queen shown in silhouette.

Images taken by Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen using the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 greatly improved scientific understanding of processes inside the nebula. One of these photographs became famous as the "Pillars of Creation", depicting a large region of star formation. The small dark areas in the photograph are believed to be protostars (Bok globules). The pillar structure of the region resembles that of a much larger star formation region in the Soul Nebula of Cassiopeia, imaged with the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2005 and characterized as "Pillars of Star Creation".

Evidence from the Spitzer Telescope suggests that the pillars in M16 may already have been destroyed by a supernova explosion. Hot gas observed by Spitzer in 2007 suggests that the area was disturbed by a supernova that exploded some 8000 to 9000 years ago. Due to the distance of the nebula, the light from the supernova would have reached Earth between 1000 and 2000 years ago. The more slowly moving shock wave from the supernova would have taken a few thousand years to move through the nebula, and would blow away the delicate pillars – but the light showing us the destruction will not reach the Earth for another millennium. [Source: Wikipedia]

The image was captured with the venerable Meade 12"LX200, using the Atik 383L+ mono at F7.16 (i.e. 2182mm FL). Astronomik's Red, Green and Blue filters, along with Ha, OIII and SII narrow band filters were used. All subs were taken at 1x1 bin, -10C, and 10 minutes each.

Image --

Red: 8 subs (1.33 hr) on Jul 9th.

Green: 8 subs (1.33 hr) on Jul 9th.

Blue: 8 subs (1.33 hr) on Jul 9th.

Ha : 31 subs (5.17 hr) on Jul 10th and Jul 17th.

OIII : 33 subs (5.50 hr) on Jul 11th and Jul 17th.

SII : 31 subs (5.17 hr) on Jul 12th and Jul 17th.

Color mix for the image was done with both the RGB wide band filters and per the Hubble palette with the narrow band filters:

Red = SII, Green = Ha, Blue = OIII

Processing was done with PixInsight using the NBRGB process script. RGB filter sets were cropped and DBE'd, then Channel Combined and further processed. Each NB filter set was integrated and fully processed. The combined RGB and individual Ha, OIII and SII were then combined with the NBRGB combination tool. This final image was further processed in PI, bringing it to the level presented.

North is up, and this is a very slight crop.

I am fairly pleased with the outcome. This is the first time I fully used PI's NBRGBCombination tool and am pleased with the results. There is quite a bit of integration time in this image. I continue to use Sequence Generator Pro, for all of the camera controls, including auto-focusing and image framing.

One negative that came out of this was very strong evidence that my optical system has reflections or ghosts that manifest themselves as slightly off center annular rings in the wide band filter images (especially green). Both OPTcorp and Starizona are working with me to resolve this issue.