The Lagoon & Trifid (M8 & M20) Region Using the Portable Setup! (Kurt Zeppetello)

The Lagoon & Trifid (M8 & M20) Region Using the Portable Setup!

Link: http://youtube.com/c/AstroQuest1

I have not imaged this M8, the Lagoon Nebula, or M20, the Trifid Nebula much not because I don't like them but because I can't see them from my yard and they are too low and the trees are too high. To get them I traveled to my closest wide open field, St. John's Cemetery 👻, even better only a mile from my house. It is a relatively new cemetery that 80 years ago was a private airstrip. The town still maintains the grassy field (not the cemetery part) since the FAA uses this as an emergency landing location. The Lagoon, the large red-white cloud in the center, is approximately 5,000 light-years away and about 110 by 50 ly in size. The nebula contains some dark, collapsing clouds of protostellar material known as Bok globules. In addition, four Herbig-Haro (HH) objects (bright spots of nebulosity associated with newborn stars) have been detected in its confines. The Trifid Nebula, the smaller blue-red cloud, is about 4,100 ly away and consists of an open-star cluster, an emission nebula in red, and a reflection nebula in blue. Numerous other objects of interest are located in this image including another Messier object, M21, a star cluster adjacent to the Trifid Nebula.

There is a lot of detail visible in this image which is surprising since it was taken with a 200mm camera lens rather than a telescope. I wanted to test out the portability of my portable setup in an actual situation rather than just setting up at my house which I have been doing. The object itself was unplanned, meaning I did not know I would image this until I got there, however, the only other object I was thinking about was the nearby Eagle and Omega complex. It was visible for approximately 2.500 hours at this location but I was only to get about 1.5 hours - not a lot but enough to get a decent image. The portable setup works really well and the only issue I had was trying to find the Lagoon as the iOptron SkyGuider Pro is not go-to so I had to locate the object the old fashion way. The main thing I tested this night which I have not before was powering it in the field. For my other mounts and setups I use a Deep Cycle Marine battery to power the scopes, camera, dew heaters, computer, and etc. For this setup, the SkyGuider has its own power, there is no computer as the ASIAIR is controlled by a tablet. To power the camera and ASIAIR I used Maxoak K2 Laptop Power Bank ($129 Amazon) which still had plenty of power after I was done as did the SkyGuider - both of these would have worked for the entire night.

https://www.instagram.com/astroquest1/
http://astroquest1.blogspot.com/
https://www.astrobin.com/users/kurtzepp/collections/
http://youtube.com/c/AstroQuest1

Final
Original
B

B

Description: Rotated and cropped!

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6044931
PixInsight job	L6TMOQ8S9CB6DVE2CYDPHF1O97TCKD70
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	18h03m50s.44
RA (top/left)	18h12m46s.58
RA (top/right)	18h14m51s.74
RA (bottom/right)	17h55m22s.87
RA (bottom/left)	17h52m16s.40

Dec (center)	-23°23′51″.9
Dec (top/left)	-27°00′57″.10
Dec (top/right)	-20°08′55″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	-19°45′23″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	-26°36′14″.2

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