Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Serpens (Ser)  ·  Contains:  Eagle Nebula  ·  HD168046  ·  HD168047  ·  HD168075  ·  HD168076  ·  HD168097  ·  HD168137  ·  HD168183  ·  IC 4703  ·  LBN 67  ·  LBN 68  ·  M 16  ·  NGC 6611  ·  Sh2-49  ·  Star Queen  ·  Star Queen nebula
"Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle nebula, Matt Hughes
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"Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle nebula

"Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle nebula, Matt Hughes
Powered byPixInsight

"Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle nebula

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Well here's my effort for the Eagle nebula with narrowband filters.

The pillars are 6500 light years away and are formed of very dense clouds of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. They are slowly eroding away leaving even more denser areas of gas that will eventually "create" stars. Hence the name.

The weather here in Victoria, Australia has been absolutely shocking for Astrophotography. The image took me the better part of 6 weeks to complete. I originally captured about 27 hours of data but I knew I'd have to dump a lot of it. This time of year the seeing is so very bad. Jet streams often at about 180 knots go right over my observing site.
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I tried a pointing model with my AP1100 AE and that seemed to help a bit. Often I'd only get 2 or 3 subs a night. What helps is my little shed observatory that I built during COVID. Not having to setup and tear down allowed me to react whenever the clouds cleared for a while. Regardless, having to throw away 1/3 of all my subs hurt.

I'm impressed with the Tak 1.6x extender, at F8 (830mm) I just new I had to get as many subs as possible to help with the higher ratio from the native F5 (530mm) of the Tak FSQ106IV.

Just a shout out to Adam Block and his website. His tutorials on using GHS really helped (along with everything else on his website). Also Paulyman Astro and Entering Into Space.

I thought I'd crop right in the M16 to get the pillars. It's no Hubble picture but I enjoyed the challenge all the same.
Its a big universe people.

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