The Eagle Nebula (M16, NGC 6611)
Characteristics:
Magnitude: 6.5
Size: 0.53 degrees
Distance: 7000 light years
RA: 18h 18m 50s
Dec: 13 degrees 50' 10"
Description:
The Eagle Nebula is a large, beautiful emission nebula made famous by
the "Pillars of Creation" image from the Hubble Space
Telescope. Three central pillars of gas can be seen in the
above photograph, although not with the kind of detail provided by
Hubble. Stars are being
created within the pillars, as a result of gravitational attraction of
hydrogen
gas, giving rise to the faint glow at the pillar tips that you can see
in
the above photograph. The red glow of this emission nebula is
due
to excitation of hydrogen atoms from radiation emitted by newly-formed
stars.
Photographic Details:
Date: July 30, 2003
Scope: LX90 at f5, Lumicon OAG
Autoguider: SBIG STV with e-finder
Camera: Canon 10D
Filter: IDAS LPS
Exposures: 5 x 10' each at ISO800
Conditions: Temperature 75 degress F; average transparency;
average to poor seeing; wind moderate.
Post-processing: Raw conversion, adaptive dark frame subtraction,
averaging, and background compensation done in ImagesPlus; alignment
done in Registar; levels and curves adjustment in Photoshop, with
selective noise reduction of the red channel done in Pleiades SGBNR
software.
Please
note: Graphics on this website may not be reproduced without
author permission.
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