M8 Lagoon Nebula - Guan Sheng Stakker-Lite

[Hankmeister3]

I was only able to capture 5 decent frames of M8 the other night and fortunately that was all I needed for this Stakker-Lite image. As noted before on previous posts, it was a very nice night with Bortle 4 skies near the horizon, fairly steady air at Pickering 5 to 6 and decent enough transparency. This was the steadiest air I've had over the last two years when imaging Trifid/Lagoon/Helix nebulas which are very low in our southern skies here at 40 degrees North latitude. I had to deal with a bit of LP from the town of Rantoul about 8 to 10 miles southwest of the Middlefork site, but things worked out okay without having to use a filter.

Guan Sheng 8-inch f/5 fast Newtonian
SW EQ6-R Pro mount (Sidereal + PPEC guide only)
Canon EOS 80D DSLR unmodified
5-Lights at 8 minutes 50 seconds, ISO 1250 total data window
No filters

[STEVE333]

Nice details and beautiful colors Henry. Really like the looks of this one. Nice closeup view too.

Steve

[MariusD69]

Very nice! Well done, Henry!

[OzEclipse]

Very nice! Thanks for sharing. Nice drive too if that's unguided.

Joe

[Juno16]

Great image Henry!

What is more stunning is that you managed to capture it with a total exposure under 9 minutes!

I can see into the Lagoon! Nice!

Enjoy those skies!

I’m sitting on the porch at dawn and I can’t tell if my skies are clear or not. The Sahara dust has moved in and created their own clouds of sorts. A thick haze. Seen it in the past, but never like this! What a time we live in!

Spectacular image Henry, thanks!

[Hankmeister3]

Very nice! Thanks for sharing. Nice drive too if that's unguided.

Joe

Thanks Joe. I have an autoguider but I don't use it. I use the internal PPEC tracking in the mount and let 'er rip. If I'm super polar-aligned I can usually get about 3 minutes of pretty decent tracking with a frame waste rate of about 30 to 40% from night to night and depending on how extreme the angle of the tube is even if both axis are balanced correctly. Sometimes I have to pre-load the RA axis, sometimes not. The EQ6-R Pro is pretty "tight" in the RA axis, at least in my mount it is.

[jthommes]

Nice one Henry. Great colors.