Categories: Astrophotos

Astrophoto: Spectacular View of the Triffid Nebula in Narrowband

M20, the Triffid Nebula in narrowband, Taken remotely from Siding Springs Observatory in Australia. 38 hours of exposure, taken during May 2014. Credit and copyright: Ian Sharp.

What a gorgeous deep sky astrophoto! M20, also known as the Trifid Nebula is located in Sagittarius, and its name means ‘divided into three lobes.’ The ‘lobes’ are clearly visible in this very pretty palette of colors by astrophotographer Ian Sharp.

“I’ve been agonising about this one because it was a real struggle to find a palette that worked because the Hα data was so strong,” Ian told Universe Today via email. He said the regular Hubble palette caused a very green result, so instead he used this mix of channels:

R: (Hα x 0.50) + (SII x 0.50)
G: (OIII x 0.85) + (Hα x 0.15)
B: OIII

Remove All Ads on Universe Today

Join our Patreon for as little as $3!

Get the ad-free experience for life

This was taken remotely from Siding Spring Observatory in Australia over the past few weeks, with 38 hours of exposure.

Hα: 27 x 1800s
OIII: 28 x 1800s
SII: 21 x 1800s

Here’s the link to the photo on Ian’s website.

The details of the equipment used to take this are below:

Optical Tube Assembly RCOS 12.5” F/9 (2857mm focal length) Carbon-Fibre Tube w/TCC2, PIR and FFC
Equatorial Mount Bisque Paramount ME
Imaging Camera Apogee F16M-D9 (KAF-16803) with 7 slot filter wheel
Imaging Camera Filters Astrodon Series II L,R,G,B, Ha (5nm), OIII (3nm) and SII (3nm)
Guide Camera MMOAG with SBIG ST-402ME
The system delivers a 44×44 arcmin FoV operating at .65 arcsec/pixel

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/