This object, the central region of the Eagle Nebula, is my favorite object in the sky. It consists of a star cluster (NGC 6611) and an emission nebula (IC 4703) and is located 7000 light years away in the constellation of Serpens at a declination of -14 degrees.
This image is a reprocess of my last effort to capture it with the EdgeHD11 in 2020. I was eager to see if new processing techniques could pull out more detail (and less stars). My 2020 effort is seen
here. I am happy with the reprocess and especially thankful for our excellent processing tools.
The large star cluster at the heart of the Eagle contains approximately 8000 stars and is the source for the ionization of the surrounding gas clouds. The darker areas of dense gas are believed to be the sites of new star formation. Two such areas include the "Pillars of Creation", at the center of the image, and the "Stellar Spire" above and left of the pillars.
The Pillars of Creation formation was made famous in a 1995 Hubble telescope photo and has become the most recognizable Hubble image. The pillars are being eroded by the light from nearby stars that have recently formed. The small dark areas in the image are believed to be protostars (Bok globules), containing dense cosmic dust and gas from which star formation may take place. The Stellar Spire is about 10 light-years tall, with numerous gracefully sculpted cloud shapes at its head.
This narrowband image uses the Hubble SHO color pallet, with red, green and blue colors assign to the sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen filters respectively. RGB data was used for the stars.
***********************
This object is one of many included in both of my free astrophotography targeting tools:
- Imm Deep Sky Compendium (detailed Excel spreadsheet prioritizing 3100 targets based on time, your location, and moon location)
- Top 750 DSOs (simpler pdf tool for quickly seeing what is overhead on each night of the year)
Comments