I was very pleased with this new image of M8 - the beautiful Lagoon nebula - which I revisited again for the second time this week.
This time I used the slightly larger 130PHQ, so hopefully this image proves to be an improvement on my
previous version. The stars are certainly much crisper, and there is more fine detail in the dust lanes, Bok globules and nebulosity, giving the image overall a more refined appearance.
Conditions were excellent, with clear skies and no wind. The ASI071MC camera slightly under-samples with this telescope, so I dithered all 37 subs and drizzled the integration to enhance the fine detail. I tightened up the star profiles slightly using BlurX, reduced background noise using NoiseX, and applied a small amount of tone stretching to the final image using Affinity Photo.
I like to call this target the
Pearl nebula, because of its striking resemblance to the shell of an oyster, displaying a luminescent pearl.
The '
Pearl' is the bright core of M8, illuminated by the supergiant star Herschel 36. The adjacent tornado-like structures are thought to be caused by the difference in temperature between their cold interiors and hot surfaces eroded by stellar winds.The nebula derives its traditional name from the lagoon-like dust lane that divides the nebula in two, with the brighter half centred on 9 Sgr.
Also of interest in this image are the clouds of dust and gas visible within and surrounding the nebula, several Bok globules including B88, B89 and B296, and NGC6530, an open cluster of young stars seen here to the right of the lagoon.
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