M8 - Lagoon nebula in SHO and RGB stars (AstroDarkTeam)

M8 - Lagoon nebula in SHO and RGB stars

Our 10th deep sky target, imaged by the French AstroDarkTeam composed of Pascal Gouraud and Stephane Rolland from the beautiful and efficient Astro ARO remote observatory in Portugal.

Commonly known as the Lagoon Nebula, M8 was discovered in 1654 by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna, who, like Charles Messier, sought to catalog nebulous objects in the night sky so they would not be mistaken for comets. This star-forming cloud of interstellar gas is located in the constellation Sagittarius and its apparent magnitude of 6 makes it faintly visible to the naked eye in dark skies. Located 5,200 light-years from Earth, M8 is home to its own star cluster: NGC 6530 The massive stars embedded within the nebula give off enormous amounts of ultraviolet radiation, ionizing the gas and causing it to shine.

We all have already imaged M8 to test each new material because it seems that there is no limit to discover new details each time. We made this image with a fairly low number of images but we already obtained a wide range of colors and contrast. The large differences in contrast between the very bright center and the dark edges but also very rich in detail made the treatment very interesting and challenging.

Technical details
Total exposure of 11 hours and 15 minutes between July 7 and 10 have been integrated.
[color=var(--lighterGrey)]4 hours for HA, 3 hours for OIII and 3h45 for SII[/color]
[color=var(--lighterGrey)]For stars, we integrated 30 minutes with RGB filters[/color]

TOA telescope 130mm in diameter, 1000mm focal length, Flattener, Moonlite Nightcrawler 35 focuser/rotator, ASI2600MM monochrome camera cooled to -10 degrees, ZWO filter wheel with 36mm Chroma LRGBSHO filters
Autoguiding optical splitter ZWO with Camera ASI290MM
EQ8-R Mount - NINA software with advanced and automated sequencer, PHD2 Guiding
Pixinsight processing.

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Mix of multiple sources
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8354871
PixInsight job	YOF6H6KVW9CB18ZA2JBH987OVNDLE3PB
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	18h04m05s.605
RA (top/left)	18h01m09s.889
RA (top/right)	18h07m01s.349
RA (bottom/right)	18h07m00s.242
RA (bottom/left)	18h01m11s.460

Dec (center)	-24°17′41″.74
Dec (top/left)	-24°44′25″.91
Dec (top/right)	-24°44′26″.91
Dec (bottom/right)	-23°50′42″.91
Dec (bottom/left)	-23°50′43″.84

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