Sagittarius starcloud and the Lagoon Nebula

Hi all, I managed to get out again last night to image with a new Canon ef 85mm f1.8 lens that arrived this week form the states. Conditions were clear, but I had some light pollution to deal with again, this shot was piggybacked on a motorised C8. It's a shot of the sagittarius starcloud M24 and the lagoon nebula, but you can also see just how rich this part of the milkyway really is, it's my own favourite, this shot sort of shows what to expect when looking here with a good pair of binoculars

You can also see the globular cluster M22 lower left, along with both M18, M23 and M25 around the starcloud. Above the Lagoon nebula M8 are M20 and M21. You can also see M28. The sky background is not totally black because of the approaching twighlight, which gives this shot it's blue tinge. Still, little processing done, just slight alteration to levels in PS. Not bad for a 2 minute exposure This lens is very fast, I had to stop it down to f6.3 to keep the shot from being washed out.

Details:
Date: 14th May 2005
Canon 300D 85mm Canon ef f1.8 lens at f6.3

I hope you like it, and encourage you to take a look here with those binoculars!
Keith..





Exposure: Two minutes, ISO 1600, Auto White Balance, RAW Mode

:shock: :shock: :shock:

Your images are wonderful, and I enjoy them. I have been struggling to see Machholtz recently,(I have followed it from December untill March,lost it then and have not seen it since) in my 10x50 Carl Zeiss Jena binoculars,which are about 20yrs old.I also have been trying to see the Sambero Nebula a 9.5 object, Machholtz is a 9.5 object at the moment and even though I know where it is courtsey of heavens above I can not see it from Bray! Is it my binoculars ? what would be considered an upgrade from them?I am trying for the IFAS binocular challange and am stuck on 20 objects.

Keith,
that lens is A1, great colour correction,
nice image BTW.
When you have the lens fully opened (lowest F#) do you see any signs of distortion in the star images?

great shot Keith . . . I had a bash at labelling the region again. I like the way the picture brings out the yellowish tint of the globular M22 which is due to the very old stars comprising this object. I omitted the "NGC" from a couple of the labels (e.g. "6530" is "NGC 6530"). If the image quality doesn't look too good then I have the image in a 166K pdf that I can upload as well.

atb,

John

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...-sgr_labelled_kg.jpg

An excellent photo with lots of potential.

With a few shots and darks to increase the signal to noise ratio and some post-processing then that would be as good as anything else on the net.

Here is your same shot after just post-processing of the JPEG image. All I did was play with the histogram, both the gamma level and the S-curves and then put it through a black and white points process. Of course, using the RAW image, signal to noise ratio work and ridding the image of sky glow would result in an even better image. (Reduced in size for bandwidth considerations)