As Spring turns to Summer, targets nearer the centre of the Milky Way rise higher in the northern night sky. Particularly iconic is the Eagle Nebula with the “Pillars of Creation”, made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is catalogued as NGC 6611 or Messier 16, M16, and is located in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way. At nearly 6000 ly distance, it is an unusually bright nebula (apparent magnitude 6.4) due to the extensive star forming regions it contains. The cluster associated with the Nebula has approximately 8100 stars. One of the few nebula in the portfolio that has enjoyed an alternative working of the data. This interpretation is based around a more classic “HSO” colour palette, with the hydrogen-alpha emission being mapped to red and the sulphur-II emission mapped to yellow. The image contains data from an I´ near IR photometric filter, which provide the highlights in the centre of the nebula. The image was taken from a dark sky region in northeastern Spain.
Celestron RASA 11″
10Micron GM1000 HPS
SIGMA fp (monochrome) / SIGMA fp L (colour)
H-alpha / S-II ultra-fast narrowband filters,
I´ photometric filter
ca. 3 hrs, ISO 1600, F2.2, 620mm