Three Images of the Eagle Nebula

Here are three different versions of M16, The Eagle Nebula in the constellation of Serpens Cauda. Interestingly, the constellation of Serpens is unique in that it is the only one that is split into two distinct pieces, namely Serpens Caput (the head) and Serpens Cauda (the tail). All of these images have been recently taken using the amazing telescope that I co-share with Australian amateur Jason Jennings. This scope is hosted in the iTelescope.net ‘barn’ at the Siding Spring Observatory, Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia. I’ll write another post about the scope soon, but it is an amazing 16″ f/3.5 astrograph.

This first version is a ‘traditional’ LRGB image, meaning it has been made by taking separate images using Clear (Luminance), Red, Green and Blue filters and then combining those to make a final colour image. This should be close to how the eye would perceive the colour because the R,G and B filters pass frequencies of light similar to the sensors in our tri-colour vision system. The clear filter is used as a luminance channel and is where most of the sharpened detail resides.

As with all the images, please click on them to see a full-sized version.

M16 LRGB Version

This next version is taken using three narrowband filters. These are H-Alpha (Ha), OIII and SII. The wavelength of these filters are commonly used by astronomers because there are a lot of emission nebulae that have excited atoms in them that emit light in these wavelengths (especially Ha which is nearly always the strongest). So, to produce an ‘RGB’ image from them requires that they are mapped to the Red, Green and Blue channels of the image. I have chosen to use the ‘Hubble Palette’ which maps the SII to Red, Ha to Green and OIII to Blue. Here is the result:

M16 Narrowband Version

You will notice that the star colours are not good in the narrowband version and this is a consequence of the filter mapping and also because of the relative strengths of the three channels. So, in the third image below, I have combined the stars from the RGB image with the nebulosity from the narrowband image. Here it is:

M16 – NB with RGB stars

I’m not sure which version I prefer!

Finally, a 4th image (I lied!) taken last year with a longer focal length instrument (12″ f/9 RCOS) which shows the ‘Pillars of Creation’ in more resolution. This was also taken using the Hubble Palette which is appropriate because the iconic pillars were made famous by those fabulous images from the Hubble telescope.

The heart of M16