M16 SER Eagle Nebula - An early bird flying very low above the horizon (below 20 degrees) (Wouter Cazaux)

M16 SER Eagle Nebula - An early bird flying very low above the horizon (below 20 degrees)

M16 SER Eagle Nebula - An early bird flying very low above the horizon (below 20 degrees)

The aim for this image was not to be perfect, but just to see if it was at all possible to catch a low flying eagle. M16 is flying very low at my latitude, but is oh so coveted to be captured. Earlier this year I had already captured a low flying bird, the seagull nebula, but this eagle goes even lower, barely clipping 23 degrees, the last subs captured at 19 degrees, swamped in the haze that covers the horizon.

And to make matters worse, south-bound right in the spot where the backdoor neighbour (a motorcycle garage) has a LED light flooding an empty parking lot, aimed at my garden, burning the night-sky darkness all night long (how crazy can people be to put these lights up - didn’t they ever hear about light pollution?)

Two nights of capture, 2:24 hours in total, not enough to get a smooth image and clear out the noise, but I wanted to check early on if the eagle was willing to land this July.

And yes … the eagle has landed …

No fancy processing on this one, just trying to smoothen out the detail from the background noise … and in the middle, catch out that coveted glimpse of the Pillars of Creation, the iconic Hubble image.

TS94, ASI2600MC, EQ6R-Pro
L-Enhance 48x 180s = 2:24
20220722-20220724
Astrobin:

Tucked at the side there are 2 Sharpless objects, Sh2-50 and Sh2-53, but my framing on the first night was a bit off, so they got impacted by the crop. Lately I’ve been going for longer integration times, but wanted to check early if it was worth the hours. I couldn’t have dreamt that this would’ve been possible …

Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭

Follow me @astrowaut

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6057530
PixInsight job	DMW592NOBY6RE7202L5MK2O84MO3E3SR
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	18h19m19s.66
RA (top/left)	18h25m25s.13
RA (top/right)	18h13m13s.68
RA (bottom/right)	18h13m11s.80
RA (bottom/left)	18h25m30s.14

Dec (center)	-13°48′41″.6
Dec (top/left)	-12°43′32″.2
Dec (top/right)	-12°44′11″.8
Dec (bottom/right)	-14°53′15″.3
Dec (bottom/left)	-14°52′37″.4

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