July 2023
Imaging: TS130 apo, ZWO ASI2600mc (gain 100, 0C), L-EnhanceSubs: 310x60s (5h), darks, flats, and darkflats
Software: NINA, Phd2, PixInsight, BlurXT, NoiseXT, StarXT
Dedicated to my wife Manting, who first discovered images of this target and convinced me to try to capture it (first back in 2021).
(Additional notes below)
Gallery
Notes
This is a target made culturally famous by its spectacular Hubble image. The so-called Pillars of Creation are three spires within Messier 16, the Eagle Nebula. They are so named, according to Wikipedia, because the gas and dust are in the process of creating stars. The Pillars are about 4 LY long but about 7000 LY from us. There is some debate about whether some new data indicates that the Pillars have already been destroyed, but either way, we will continue to see them this way for at least another thousand years.This is my second pass at this target. There were two major complications to producing this image. First is the target size. Given the spires' height to distance ratio, it is like trying to show 3 foot high poles from a mile away. This is a higher resolution than my first attempt in 2021 as I now have a longer FL scope. Still, it is crop/zoom of the overall image so some of detail is lost. The bigger complication is that the popularized image is in the eponymous "Hubble palette" which uses different colors to show the Ha, S, and OIII gases. My camera is a straight RGB camera and can't do this directly (the direct image is mostly all red). It takes a lot of finagling to create a pseudo-SHO palette. I have used this technique before, but I still have trouble reproducing what I want every time and it is sometimes hit or miss.
You can see the difference between the 2021 version and this one at this GIF.
