The Lagoon Nebula (catalogued as Messier 8 or M8, NGC 6523, Sharpless 25, RCW 146, and Gum 72) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region.. Within the nebula is the open cluster NGC 6530.
The Lagoon Nebula is estimated to be between 4,000–6,000 light-years away from the Earth.. with a dimension of 110 by 50 light years.
The nebula contains a number of Bok globules (dark, collapsing clouds of protostellar material) the most prominent of which have been catalogued by E. E. Barnard as B88, B89 and B296. It also includes a funnel-like or tornado-like structure caused by a hot O-type star that emanates ultraviolet light, heating and ionizing gases on the surface of the nebula.
The Lagoon Nebula also contains at its centre a structure known as the Hourglass Nebula (so named by John Herschel).
In 2006, four Herbig–Haro objects were detected within the Hourglass, providing direct evidence of active star formation by accretion within it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagoon_Nebula

The name apparently refers to the shape with the dark lane through the middle, not unlike two lagoons separated by a sandbar. While visible to the unaided eye and therefore certainly seen in antiquity, there is no known mention of this nebula until 1654, when Sicilian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna recorded his observations of the star cluster within the nebula.https://earthsky.org/clusters-nebulae-galaxies/the-lagoon-nebula-messier-8/

I suggest to see this image from Hubble.
At the center of the photo, a monster young star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun is blasting powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust.
This mayhem is all happening at the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 4,000 light-years away and visible in binoculars simply as a smudge of light with a bright core.
The giant star, called Herschel 36, is bursting out of its natal cocoon of material, unleashing blistering radiation and torrential stellar winds (streams of subatomic particles) that push dust away in curtain-like sheets. This action resembles the Sun bursting through the clouds at the end of an afternoon thunderstorm that showers sheets of rainfall.
Herschel 36’s violent activity has blasted holes in the bubble-shaped cloud, allowing astronomers to study this action-packed stellar breeding ground. https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2018/21/4150-Image.html

NGC 6559-Star formation region
Is a cloud of gas and dust located at a distance of about 5000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). The glowing region is a relatively small object, just a few light-years across, in contrast to the one hundred light-years and more spanned by its famous neighbour, the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8, eso0936). Although it is usually overlooked in favour of its distinguished companion, NGC 6559 has the leading role in this new picture.The gas in the clouds of NGC 6559, mainly hydrogen, is the raw material for star formation. When a region inside this nebula gathers enough matter, it starts to collapse under its own gravity. The centre of the cloud grows ever denser and hotter, until thermonuclear fusion begins and a star is born. The hydrogen atoms combine to form helium atoms, releasing energy that makes the star shine. https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1320/

NGC 6544 - Globular Cluster
Is located in the western part of the constellation, on the edge of a rich star field; its location is easily recoverable as it is located just 50' towards the southeast compared to the famous Lagoon Nebula. It can also be seen with 10×50mm binoculars as a small white spot like a misty star; with a telescope of 120mm and 100× magnification a few small stars may be resolved. Telescopes from 200mm up allow resolving of dozens of dim stars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_6544

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This target was one of the first that we put on our list and that we wanted to do due to the beauty and particularity that this nebula presents. It was even more pleasant to find in it details such as the 'Boks', the interstellar dust filaments and other structures that are in its center and expand giving the nebula a perspective of depth.

Maurizio basically made two sessions for this project, one dedicated with the LPro filter to make the star base and another dedicated with the Triad Ultra filter for the part of the structure. He went to two mountainous locations at 1,200masl with Bortle 4 and it was really worth it as the quality of the sessions (from the results) was very good.

As usual I stack the L-Pro for the stars in DSS and a normal stack with Triad Ultra filter to then perform a Siril extraction of Ha and [OIII]. I also did a normal stack in Siril but it wasn't incorporated into the final SHO merge file made as I didn't think it added anything new to the image.

The new thing that I incorporated in this opportunity is that with the result of both extractions, the Ha and [OIII] was to retake the preprocessed sequence of both that Siril emits in its processing and apply background extraction to it, a new registration and stack was made, and proceeded to apply the Histogram Transformation and then an additional touch of GHT.

Once both final results were obtained, I proceeded to work on them in Ps, removing noise, obtaining a starless image, applying Noise Exterminator and Denoise, Clarity, S curve until both extractions had similar contrast and luminosity. Observing in the extractions the wonderful structures that this nebula presents was really exciting and satisfying.

Then apart I made a combination of both extractions to obtain the green channel combining 30% Ha and 70% [OIII]. I proceeded to make a SHO-type image by placing the Ha in the red channel, the aforementioned combination in the green, and the [OIII] in the blue, applying the Hue technique, assigning each channel a certain color value, that is, not necessarily the conventional color value used for the channels, rather a little softer.

Then in CamRaw, a few additional touches in Hue, curves in the different channels until the various internal and external structures of that region as well as the surrounding objects highlight their characteristics.

Last minute (yesterday) I downloaded a new program called AstroSharp, which should only be applied to a calibrated image and after only the initial stretch has been done. In any case, I wanted to do a test with my final starless image and I must confess that the result surprised me since in the details that it extracted it gave a natural soft contrast and very pleasant luminosity. That is why I incorporated it as a layer, in the workflow of the image file with 18%. In the same file, the initial stack of normal DSS of the TriadUltra and several SHO-type layers with different forms of blending were incorporated, achieving a combination where it would present and highlight the characteristics of the nebula.

As usual, get back the stars into the image requires several tests and that region is particularly dense with stars and achieving the display balance is always an exercise in patience until you get what you want.

The result is what you observe and for our part we are more than happy with what we have obtained.

Thank you for the visit and we hope you like it and have everyone Clear Sky!

Processed May-June 2023.