My La Palma trip - the Milky Way and more

John D wrote: Hi Guys,

As promised, the M16 image from my La Palma trip.

45 second exposures in H-alpha, SII and OIII filters.

Enjoy.

That is stunning !

WoW! Fabulous.

Thanks guys, I am quite please with it!

WOW! That's fantastic.
You might describe a bit more on the number of frames and processing techniques please.
I think people would be interested to know how to get a result that good.
Thanks,
Michael.

Hi Michael,

Good idea. Well this image is a mosaic of 9 images taken with the 4.2m telescope in La Palma in the Canary Islands.
These 9 images were taken with Ha, OIII and SII. The pinky colour is the ionised Hydrogen in the nebula.

Each image taken was only 45 seconds long, so the total exposure, including overheads, is around 8 minutes.

I think the 4.2 m aperture helped a lot with this image.

Images were aligned in PS6 and red was assigned for Ha, blue for OIII and green for SII. I may have the last two mixed up but you get the idea.

No flats or darks were needed for this image as the dark current on the ACAM instrument is so small its virtually unnoticeable. Bias is automatically removed from the image as it loads from the instrument to the computer monitor.

I would be more than happy to answer any other questions you guys have.


Clear Skies,
John Dolan

John that is just an incredible image, it's not too often that an image of this quality is posted here with a 4.2m telescope.

Good career choice !

Keith.