Astronomy Picture of the Day -- A Sagittarius Triplet

NASA ^ | August 10, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit and Copyright: Christian vd Berge (DSLR Astrophotograhy)]

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[2nd Amendment]

Thank you! I’ve seen all three, but they are greyish since I can’t stack photo exposures yet. Don’t forget the beautiful clusters around Sagittarius. M28 sparkles like a jewel box!

[Hebrews 11:6]

At last, some light shed on what inspired Jackson Pollock.

[dr_lew]

It's funny, just a few nights ago I went out to my ( relatively ) dark site in the hinterlands with the intention of taking a shot of M11 with my Starmax 127 and Nikon D5100 at the prime focus, using a simple eyepiece adaptor fitting. it's clocked, but not guided, and I use the maximum 30sec exposure with an ISO 6400 setting.

It was very clear for this season, there were a lot of bright deep sky objects in the southern sky, and I was picking them at random. My best result was this shot of the Lagoon Nebula.

Relative to the APOD work and other stuff you see online, this is Brownie Camera stuff. It's certainly simple to do, although there is certain amount of setup required. I find the results rewarding, but let me be clear that I'm not putting this up against the APOD stuff. Still, I do harbor a grudging opionion that this is what it REALLY looks like. I should add that I did clean this up with some photo adjustments in Paint.net, darkening the sky and sharpening the nebulosity.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks dr_lew.