My First attempt with M8 and M20

Two of the most famous and beautiful nebulae are the Lagoon Nebula (M8) and the Trifid Nebula (M20), which are located in the constellation Sagittarius. These nebulae are star-forming regions, where clouds of gas and dust are illuminated by the radiation of young and hot stars. The Lagoon Nebula is about 150 light-years across and 4350 light-years away from us, while the Trifid Nebula is about 25 light-years across and 4000 light-years away. 

I finally got my new scope and new camera. I wanted to test them out and see what they could do. I decided to make M8 and M20 my first targets, as they were well positioned in the south to southwest sky. However, I faced several difficulties along the way, such as getting the backfocus right for the scope and powering the camera from asiair+ which was not providing enough power for the camera in addition to imaging from bortel 8.After many trials, I realized that the ASIAIR+ was not able to supply enough power for the camera, instead it had to get power from independent source away from ASIAIR .

The camera would shut down randomly or fail to take exposures, and especially when taking calibration frames where the camera needs more power that the ASIAIR can't provide so it shuts down many times, where I had to restart and wait fro the camera to cool (Not fun at all). I had to find another power source for the camera, so I used a separate 12V AC/DC power supply to connect the camera to, another similar pier supply for the mount and another for the ASIAIR. Not sure if this is optimum but it worked at last. But I'm sure this will not be optimum in a remote site (Making me angry with ZWO for not providing enough/clear guidance) !! I felt I spent more time trouble shooting that could have been spent capturing light!! 

Imaging from bortel 8 was always a limiting factor. Being in a white zone with a lot of street lights and other sources of artificial light, which wash out the faint details of the nebulae. To overcome this, I had been trying some filters last year, but the new Antlia Tri-band filter I got was good. It did a good job to isolate the nebulae from the background skyglow, but they also reduce the amount of light that reaches the camera sensor, and here comes the good quantum efficiency of the ASI2600MC camera ====>>> But for sure, this does not eliminate the necessity of taking longer exposures and more frames to get enough signal-to-noise ratio.

After several nights of trouble shooting and finally two nights of imaging, I finally got at least a satisfactory result. It showed both M8 and M20 in their full glory, with rich colors and textures. The Lagoon Nebula looked like a pool of red light surrounded by dark lanes of dust, while the Trifid Nebula looked like a flower with petals of blue. 

This one needed lots of patience that I don't have