Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Sagittarius (Sgr)  ·  Contains:  M 20  ·  NGC 6514  ·  Trifid nebula
M20 in Close-Up, Fernando
M20 in Close-Up
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M20 in Close-Up

M20 in Close-Up, Fernando
M20 in Close-Up
Powered byPixInsight

M20 in Close-Up

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Description

The M20, also known as The Trifid Nebula, is made up by three kind of nebulae, namelly: a emission nebula, which is a HII region (the red part), a reflection nebula, the blue part, that reflects the light of the big stars and the dark nebulae, which is the apparent gaps between the emission nebula. This dark nebula has the Bernard catalog number 85.

Some studies in close-up images show a dense cloud of dust and gas, which is a stellar nursery full of embryonic stars. This cloud is about 8 ly away from the nebula's central star. A stellar jet enters from the head of the cloud and is about 0.75 ly long. The jet's source is a young stellar object deep within the cloud. Jets are the scaped gasses of star formation. Radiation from the nebula's central star makes the jet glow.

In this image is possible to see a mountain-like feature to the right hand of the image. On the top of this mountain like feature there is a very thin stalk-like feature. It points from the head of the dense cloud directly toward the star that powers the Trifid nebula. This stalk is a prominent example of evaporating gaseous globules, or 'EGGs'. The stalk has survived because its tip is a knot of gas that is dense enough to resist being eaten away by the powerful radiation from the star.

For more information on star formation in M20, please see the article at:

http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/aa/pdf/2008/37/aa10079-08.pdf

Some handbook data:

Constellation: Sagittarius

RA: 18h 02m

Dec: -22Deg 58sec

Distance: 5 Thousand Light Yeards

Apparent size: 28 arc-min

Magnitude: 6.3

Aprox. Transit Date at local midinight: July 16

Aprox Age: 300.000 years

Image Details:

Luminance: 15x300sec

Red: 12x300sec

Green: 5x300sec

Blue: 12x300sec

Telescope: Skywatcher Quattro CF 10 f/4

CCD: Tria SX-694

CCD Guiding: Lodestar

Capture and guiding software: MaxIm DL

Mount: AZ-EQ-6 Pro

Processing: PixInsight

Bias, Darks and Flats applied

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M20 in Close-Up, Fernando