M20 Trifid Nebula (Joe Niemeyer)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Sagittarius (Sgr) · Contains: M 20 · NGC 6514 · Trifid Nebula

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M20 Trifid Nebula

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M20 Trifid Nebula

Here is my image of the exquisite, colorful, and unusual Trifid Nebula, cataloged as Messier 20. Its name comes from the 3 apparent lobes in the red emission portion of the nebula. It is composed of 4 types of deep space objects, the aforementioned emission nebula, the dark dust nebula in the foreground, the blue reflection nebula to the left, and an open star cluster. M20 is located about 5,200 light years from Earth in the direction of our galactic core in the constellation Sagittarius. It is thought to be a relatively young 300,000 years old and the central star is 20 times bigger than our Sun.

I have wanted to image this nebula ever since one of my earliest attempts at astrophotography when I shot the nearby Lagoon Nebula. I got my opportunity recently when we had a break in the weather and smoke and before Trifid passed below the Western horizon until next Summer.

Fun fact -- this nebula appeared in the Star Trek episode "The Alternative Factor" when Lazarus A, from the antimatter universe, fought with Lazarus B in a negative magnetic corridor between universes. M20 was used to represent the magnetic corridor. This image from my humble telescope is actually much better quality than what appeared in the 1967 Star Trek episode.

I made this image from thirty 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 and post-processed with Photoshop utilizing the StarXTerminator, Astronomy Tools, and Topaz DeNoise AI plugins.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5103895
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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