It's been a couple of productive weeks since the 4th and I'm still catching up on my image processing.

This one is of Messier 16, the Eagle Nebula. It is one of the most well known of the summer Milky Way nebulae, mostly because of Hubble's famed Pillars of Creation image. To me, it looks more like a dog sitting up and begging, but hey, to each their own.

M-16 is an emission nebula in the constellation of Serpens, the snake, and is an active star forming region about 6500 light years from Earth.

Messier 16, The Eagle Nebula

Date: 2010-07-04/05
Lens: AT106LE, 106mm f/6.85 Triplet Refractor, w/ ATFF Field Flattener
Camera: SBIG ST8300M
Filter: Baader 7nm hAlpha
Mount: Celestron CGE
Guider: Orion ST80 w/Starshoot Autoguider & PHD
20 X 180 seconds, 150 darks, no flats, no bias
Image Acquisition: CCD Soft
Stacked with Deep Sky Stacker, Processed with FITS Liberator and Photoshop CS4

I've also included below a tighter crop of the Pillars of Creation portion of M-16. It's not quite as good as Hubble's, but I think it's decent. I'll hopefully return to this one later in the year to get some color data to add to it.