The Lagoon Nebula

The Lagoon Nebula
2

The Lagoon Nebula

The Lagoon Nebula (aka Messier 8, NGC 6523, Sharpless 25, RCW 146, and Gum 72) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation of Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region.

It is estimated to be between 4,000–6,000 light-years away from the Earth. It's actual size is 110 by 50 light years. The nebula contains a number of Bok globules (dark, collapsing clouds of protostellar material).

Another sublime dataset from the ASA 500N, an absolute joy to work on.

Total integration: 1.5 hrs
SPECIFICATIONS
Telescope ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Telescope
ASA 500N, Chi-2
Camera ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Camera
FLI PL16803
Location ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Location
El Sauce Observatory, Rio Hurtado, Chile
Date of observation ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Date of observation
2nd May 2022
Filters ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Filters
Astrodon SHO 3nm
Processing ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Processing
PixInsight, Topaz, Photoshop
Credits ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Credits
Data: Telescope Live, Processing: Jonathan Lodge
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Comments

Wow, how did you manage to get such natural colors with narrowband filters? It looks awesome!

Thank you Nicolas, do you mean the stars or the whole image in general? For the stars I follow a modified version of Yannick's tutorial on creating natural looking stars from NB data. To get these colours for the nebula I make a HOO image (but push the green more towards blue) then add the SII data as magenta. Then I tweak the colours using a combination of tools in PS and Adobe Camera Raw until I get a pleasing result. I hope that helps.