M16 Eagle Nebula
Date: July 19, 2009 2:30am
Location: Island Star Party 2009, Malahat, BC, Canada
I have previously taken photos of the Eagle Nebula which were narrow field and showed the "pillars of creation" by using my 8" SCT operating at f/10. While at the Island Star Party, I wanted to take advantage of the dark skies and good southern exposure to take a wide field photo of the same object. This photo shows the fainter nebulosity and dark areas surrounding the Eagle Nebula.
Equipment: Hutech-modified Canon XTi dSLR mounted prime focus on a Borg 101ED f/4 Astrograph mounted on an HEQ5.
60 x 1 minute exposures at ISO 80010°C, LVM 4.5, Transparency 4/5, Steadiness 4/5, Humidity 56%, clear skies.
Processing:
ImagesPlus 3.75 - Auto-process - digital development from raw, dark & flat frame calibration, normalize, grading, alignment, average min/max exclude combine. Aggressive contrast stretch (BP 650). Crop.
ACDSee Pro 2.5: resize, reduce colour depth to 24 bit, save as jpg.