M20 + M21

[dcrowson]

M20 (The Trifid Nebula, NGC 6514, Sh2-30 and others) is a large emission (bottom portion) and reflection (top portion) nebula located approximately 5,200 light-years away in Sagittarius.

M21 (NGC 6531 and others) is a trumpler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpler_classification) class I 3 m open cluster located approximately 3,900 light-years away.

Luminance – 12x600s – 120 minutes – binned 1x1
RGB – 8x300s – 40 minutes each – binned 2x2

240 minutes total exposure – 4 hours

Imaged on September 6th and 8th, 2021 at the Danville Conservation Area (New Florence, Missouri) with a SBIG ST-8300M on an Astro-Tech AT90EDT at f/6.7 603mm.

LRGB - https://www.flickr.com/photos/dcrowson/ ... 1/sizes/l/

I have a closer image of M20 taken at Danville here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/dcrowson/7627067670.

This is image will be panel three of four for a mosaic of the area.



Dan

[MariusD69]

Wonderful image! Great work! One of my favorite targets, but due to its low altitude, I'm rarely able to capture it.

[Gordon]

Congratulations Dan on having your image selected as todays TSS APOD!

app.php/article/9-11-2021-tss-astrophot ... of-the-day

[Ylem]

That's amazing Dan!
And congratulations on the well deserved APOD!

[Makuser]

Hi Dan. A beautiful image of the M20 and M21 objects. The emission and reflection nebulosity colors look fantastic, especially on the flickr site. This is superb work Dan, so thanks for sharing this with us, and congratulations on receiving the TSS APOD Award today.

[Unitron48]

Well done image! Congrats on the APOD!!

Dave