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M17 - The Swan Nebula in Sagittarius
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Copyright 2006 Hap Griffin
M17, informally called the Swan Nebula, is a vast cloud of glowing hydrogen gas
excited to luminosity by many embedded hot, young stars of which the cloud is
the primordial source material. Through a moderately sized telescope, the
brighter portion can be easily seen and resembles a floating swan with a curved
neck. The brighter parts cover an area roughly 15 light-years across while
the extended fainter nebulosity covers at least 40 light-years of space.
The extremely dark background at the left is the result of a huge dust cloud
which traverses the region and can be seen in wider field photographs of this
area. The Swan Nebula can be spotted in binoculars on clear nights.
M17 lies at a distance of 5000 light-years.
Date/Location:
September 20, 2006 Griffin/Hunter II Observatory Bethune, SC
Instrument: Canon 350XT Digital SLR (modified) through 10" Meade
RCX400
Focal Ratio: F/8
Guiding: Auto through Orion ED-80 w/ SBIG ST-237
Conditions: Visually clear
Weather: 65 deg. F
Exposure: 80 minutes total @ ISO 800 (16 x 5 min exposures)
Filters: Baader UV/IR Block
Processing: Focused and captured with DSLRFocus.
Calibrations, frame alignment and stacking, Adaptive Richardson_Lucy deconvolution, scaling
and JPEG conversion with ImagesPlus.
Color correction, curves and levels with Photoshop CS2. Noise reduction with
NeatImage.