Messier 20 “The Trifid Nebula” (Jim Raskett)

Messier 20 “The Trifid Nebula”

Messier 20 “The Trifid Nebula”

From Wikipedia:
The Trifid Nebula (catalogued as Messier 20 or M20 and as NGC 6514) is an H II region in the north-west of Sagittarius in a star-forming region in the Milky Way's Scutum–Centaurus Arm. It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764. Its name means 'three-lobe'. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (the relatively dense, reddish-pink portion), a reflection nebula (the mainly NNE blue portion), and a dark nebula (the apparent 'gaps' in the former that cause the trifurcated appearance, also designated Barnard 85). Viewed through a small telescope, the Trifid Nebula is a bright and peculiar object, and is thus a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers.

The most massive star that has formed in this region is HD 164492A, an O7.5III star with a mass more than 20 times the mass of the Sun. This star is surrounded by a cluster of approximately 3100 young stars.

Hi everyone,

This is “just for fun” process. The weather has been very poor and I came across a previous process of this image in an old email. This data was shot back in July of 2019 when I first started AP with my old Nikon D5300 (Ha modified by LifePixel). I wish that I had kept this camera!

This target (and most others in the area) are now obscured by my neighbors trees and unavailable from my backyard imaging location.
So, I decided to reprocess the 107 minutes of data just to see what I could get with the new processing tools. No flats, flat darks or bias, only 15 darks were saved and used for calibration.

The data was plagued by misshapen stars especially in the corners (no field flattener), but BXT is amazing. I have seen it do some unbelievable work, but this was extraordinary!

I got a bit "in the moment" and over-processed the image, but for under 2 hours with a modded dslr and my old AVX mount, I was happy with the result!

Thanks for looking and comments welcome!

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9855393
PixInsight job	A6SOI08F70FLNOPDIFLQLG72UHRYO3IC
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	18h02m18s.21
RA (top/left)	18h05m01s.31
RA (top/right)	18h05m02s.73
RA (bottom/right)	17h59m37s.55
RA (bottom/left)	17h59m30s.99

Dec (center)	-23°01′28″.6
Dec (top/left)	-23°58′52″.9
Dec (top/right)	-22°04′31″.2
Dec (bottom/right)	-22°03′53″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	-23°58′15″.0

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