M16
Eagle Nebula in Serpens

10.1” f/4.5, Mallincam DS432cTEC with 0.5 focal reducer
Exposures = 7-10-15-19 sec, Live Stacked frames = 30-20-10-10 (70 total), Gain = 12 of 250

M16 is a star-forming region about 70 light years across and 5700 light years distant. The eagle-shaped outline is clearly visible south-east of the star cluster associated with the nebula. The “Pillars of Creation”, made famous by the 1995 photo from the Hubble Space Telescope, is clearly visible as the talons and head of the eagle plus a third larger pillar above the eagle’s head. Many dark cloud structures can be seen cutting through brighter red portions of the nebula..

North at 12 o’clock, East at 9 o’clock

10.1” f/4.5, Mallincam DS432cTEC with Optolong L-eNhance filter
Exposures = 10-20 sec, Live Stacked frames = 30-70 (100 total), Gain = 50 of 250

When viewed in video mode (under 5 second exposures) with the L-eNhance filter, M16 shows up immediately in the field of view and is quite obvious, compared to when viewed without the filter. This image was live-stacked in trigger mode with just over 28 minutes exposure time.

North at 11 o’clock, East at 8 o’clock

10.1” f/4.5, Mallincam DS432cTEC with Optolong L-eNhance filter
LEFT: 1 frame, 2 sec exposure, 30 gain
RIGHT: same exposure and gain per frame with 677 frames stacked and post-processed in Affinity Photo (22 min 34 sec total time)

These two images show the difference between a single frame and a stack of 677 frames leveraging the “Lucky Imaging” technique. At 2 seconds the images capture a remarkable amount of clarity in details due to stable seeing conditions over short exposures. The lack of exposure time per frame is overcome by increasing the total number of frames taken; total exposure time in the image on the right is just over 22 minutes. Frames were stacked and post-processed in Affinity Photo using James Ritson’s astrophotography macros and RC Astro’s StarXterminator filter.

North at 11 o’clock, East at 8 o’clock

10.1” f/4.5, Mallincam DS432cTEC with Optolong L-eNhance filter
Exposures = 2 sec, Frames = 677, Gain = 30 of 250

Using the same data as previous image, this time post-processed in PixInsight.

Image stacked in Autostakkert using the top 75% of 903 TIFF frames, post-processed in PixInsight.

North at 11 o’clock, East at 8 o’clock