Tagged: Messier 8 - Adam Lundie - Eatons Hill Observatory

I was lucky enough to snag a second hand 900mm refractor at a good price. I needed a bright target to test it with. The Lagoon Nebula is a giant interstellar cloud around 4077 light years away, classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region.

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 15 million light-years away. It is one of the closest and brightest barred spiral galaxies in the sky.

The Lagoon Nebula is an active stellar nursery spanning 60 light years across. This false color photograph shows the interplay of three gasses: hydrogen-alpha in green, sulfur-II in red, and oxygen-III in blue.

Cloudy nights and full moons gave me a chance to have another look at one of my first deep sky photographs. The first image taken through my telescope that made me say "wow". I decided to try reprocessing the original data with the skills I've learned in the past few months.

Often I like to see how an image is processed from start to finished. Presented in this animation are the main processing steps in sequence from my reprocessed image of the Lagoon Nebula.