The Trifid

I had another round with the SLOOH scope last night and wasn't disappointed. I managed to use the scope to capture some deep sky objects and here's one of them.

I have been wanting to get this since I had my own scope but not possible till now, because of timing and poor sky conditions then. The current setup I have back in Singapore didn't give me the boost to grab this shot as SLOOH did from the Canaries. So, the Trifid shot, for now, will have to be claimed with honors from the SLOOH scope. The Trifid Nebula Messier 20 (M20, NGC 6514) in Sagittarius is a remarkable and beautiful object as it consists of both a conspicuous emission nebula and a remarkable reflection nebula component.

The energetic processes of star formation within this nebula create not only the colors but the chaos. The red-glowing gas results from high-energy starlight striking interstellar hydrogen gas. The dark dust filaments that lace M20 were created in the atmospheres of cool giant stars and in the debris from supernovae explosions. The light from M20 we see today left perhaps 3000 years ago, although the exact distance remains unknown. Light takes about 50 years to cross M20. More shots of deep sky objects over at my flickr page :-)

Meanwhile one of my lunar eclipse picture was given mentioned on the SLOOH blog!