Astrophoto: Spectacular View of the Triffid Nebula in Narrowband

By Nancy Atkinson - May 30, 2014 10:12 AM UTC | Stars

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

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 44x44 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 Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com