M20 - the elusive Trifid (Tom Gray)

M20 - the elusive Trifid

When I look at the amazing images of M20 posted on Astrobin I see a riot of bright red hydrogen emission, dark lanes and brilliant blue reflection nebulae. Not so here in my first attempt at this complex nebula. It is elusive at the best of times at this latitude, just clearing the neighbours roof at this time of year, with about an hour of 'darkish' June skies.

I managed 35 minutes, losing two 5 min frames to high cloud and a passing aircraft. Envisage did a good job of dark subtraction, at 17 Celsius (I am awaiting a replacement regulated supply for my TEC cooler after blowing up my transformer on its first night out). I used a standard IR cut filter to try and retain some of the reflection nebula.

Five frames were stacked in Penumbra and post processed in Startools - quite a lot of saturation to bring out the colours, and some artefact healing required as no flats taken. Contrast, and life module were used to try and bring out the dark lanes. At f3 in my SCT this is a difficult image to frame and process - I might try it with my Pentax 210mm zoom lens and see if I can get more data and better colours.

Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
UK Astro-Imaging
Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers
The OSC Club (One Shot Camera)

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Status	Basic failed
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Astrometry.net job	3804487
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