Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Sagittarius (Sgr)  ·  Contains:  Checkmark Nebula  ·  IC 4706  ·  IC 4707  ·  Lobster Nebula  ·  M 17  ·  NGC 6618  ·  Swan Nebula  ·  omega Nebula
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M17 The Omega Nebula in Narrow Band is NOT a Swan, Ian Parr
M17 The Omega Nebula in Narrow Band is NOT a Swan
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M17 The Omega Nebula in Narrow Band is NOT a Swan

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M17 The Omega Nebula in Narrow Band is NOT a Swan, Ian Parr
M17 The Omega Nebula in Narrow Band is NOT a Swan
Powered byPixInsight

M17 The Omega Nebula in Narrow Band is NOT a Swan

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Description

The Omega Nebula, also known as the Swan Nebula, is around 6,000 light-years from Earth and  spans some 15 light-years in diameter.
It is considered one of the brightest and most massive star-forming regions of our galaxy with an estimated 800 solar masses. 
The open cluster NGC 6618 lies embedded in the nebulosity and causes the gases of the nebula to shine from these hot, young stars.
It is also one of the youngest clusters known, with an age of just 1 million years. Apparent magnitude is 6  and it is about 40 by 30 arcminutes in size.

This is awesome object at the eyepiece  of a decent 20 inch scope on a good night, yielding stunning and wildly different views across a wide range of eyepieces and filters.

This was created with Blur Exterminator applied twice, once to each channel; firstly in Corrected mode with calculated average PSFs and once again in Auto mode before combination.
The combined image PSF is calculated and applied twice again, as above. As the image is Drizzled that took quite a while ... even with a 24 core Thread Ripper and 128 Gb of Ram. On may laptop it would take all weekend .. just like in the good old days. SpectroPhotometric Colour Calibration was applied to the linear before stretching with Generalised Hyperbolic Stretch.

Frankly there nothing fluffy about this monster ... it would make short work of a Swan so Omega might be more appropriate for such a ravenous star forming region.

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M17 The Omega Nebula in Narrow Band is NOT a Swan, Ian Parr