Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Serpens (Ser)  ·  Contains:  Eagle Nebula  ·  IC 4703  ·  M 16  ·  NGC 6611  ·  Star Queen
M16 Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation (HOO), Joe Niemeyer
M16 Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation (HOO)
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M16 Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation (HOO)

M16 Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation (HOO), Joe Niemeyer
M16 Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation (HOO)
Powered byPixInsight

M16 Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation (HOO)

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Description

This is my image of the incredible Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) and Pillars of Creation as featured in the famous 1995 Hubble Telescope image. The 1995 image, with its false color mapping for scientific purposes, captured the world's attention and awe of the beauty of the cosmos. It provided never before seen protostar details that greatly improved our understanding of star formation. This nebula is approximately 5,700 light years from Earth in the constellation Serpens. The entire nebula spans 70 by 55 light years and the iconic pillars in the center are 4 to 5 light years long. The dust columns are active star forming regions which are bathed in scorching ultraviolet light from the star cluster above. The cluster is estimated to contain about 8,100 young stars that are only 1 to 2 million years old. I am pretty happy with this image from my telescope that costs about $10 Billion less than the Hubble!

I made this image from 45 300-second exposures through my Baader dual-bandpass filter (Hα and OIII) at 2312mm prime focal length, calibrated with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames. I stacked the frames with Astro Pixel Processor, extracting the Ha and Oiii data into separate stacks. This is essentially a true-color image with Ha to the red channel and Oiii to the green and blue channels. The stack was then post-processed with Photoshop utilizing the StarXTerminator, Astronomy Tools, and Topaz DeNoise AI plugins.

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M16 Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation (HOO), Joe Niemeyer