Submitter's name:	Matt BenDaniel
Title:	Lagoon and Trifid Nebulae in Sagittarius
Gear used:	OM-1 body Tele Vue 85 APO telescope with 0.8x reducer/flattener at 480mm Losmandy GM-8 tracking mount Autoguided by SBIG ST-4 on 700mm Vixen scope (using side-by-side plate) Scanned at 4000 DPI using Polaroid SprintScan Processed in PhotoShop 5.5 using curves (black), contrast/brightness.
Diaphragm:	f/5.6
Shutter speed:	20 minutes
Film used:	Kodak Ektapress PJ400
Technical information:	Shot at Little Blair Valley, CA on 27-Apr-00 at 2:00 AM PDT. Sky conditions: 6.0 - 6.5 LVM, some suspended dust. The Lagoon is the larger nebula at the bottom. It is an emission nebula located 5,000 light years away, is 14 light years in diameter, and has the mass of 2,600 of our Suns. For comparison, the distance from the Earth to our Sun is 8 light minutes. An emission nebula is a diffuse region of ionized gas, heated by one or more hot stars. These stars were born out of the nebula relatively recently. Ultraviolet photons travel from the stars and hit the gas, ionizing it. When the electrons and protons recombine, they emit photons in visible wavelengths. The red color arises mainly from hydrogen gas. The smaller Trifid Nebula at the top is also an emission nebula, but it has reflection components, which are regions of sparse fine dust that reflect the blue light of the stars. The dark veins in the Trifid are related lanes of cool gas in the foreground. The colors are real (not digitally colorized) and are what our eyes would see if they were thousands of times more sensitive to light. For more astro pictures, click here.
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Comment left by: Olaf Greve (olaf_greve@hotmail.com)

Very nice! If only our eyes could see it like that without needing film to record it...

Comment left by: Hans van Veluwen (hcvanveluwen@chello.nl)

Beautiful and fascinating shot. The hyperlink you included currently doesn't work, though.

Comment left by: Wiliam Wagenaar (wiliam2@wish.net)

Stunning shot with nice colors. (And I thought I was using a large tele! Quite obvious not so)

Comment left by: Ian Nichols (i.a.nichols@bris.ac.uk)

This kind of shot always amazes me. I really must get some sort of tracking mount myself and go out into the sticks to try it.

Comment left by: Barry Bean (bbbean@beancotton.com)

This is the sort of shot that makes me want to get into astrophotography. Beautiful!

Comment left by: Francois Corriveau (francoiscorriveau@hotmail.com)

OH! What a great picture! Definitly one of my favorite submission!

Comment left by: Mike Butler (abutler@flash.net)

I have to agree with all of the comments above. I just got to meet Al Nagler of TeleVue a week or two ago, he makes some very impressive hardware but you need a lot more than that to get shots like this.

Comment left by: John Lind (jlind@netusa1.net)

What better subject for a night photograph than a photograph of the night? This is something that you could hang on the wall and just stare at for a long time. Great job, technically and artistically.

Comment left by: siddiq (siddim01@student.ucr.edu)

wow, an astro shot! i was considering one but the weather never co-operated. even attemping to view through a telescope is rather humbling (you are at the whims of nature and weather) and require more patience than I can manage at the moment...there's always next winter :)

Comment left by: Giles Stewart (cnocbui@indigo.ie)

I agree with John Linde - Artistry and technical prowess in one - brilliant.

Comment left by: Norm (normc@writeme.com)

I can't add any more to what others have said. Awesome.

Comment left by: Matt BenDaniel (matt@exceloncorp.com)

Reprocessed Shot I have learned alot about astrophotography since I produced this image. I have reprocessed the image to look much better. Click link above to see it.

Comment left by: Bobbie Bowden (yes@lightspeak.com)

Soooooo very beautiful, sparkling, darkly and numinously mysterious and thrilling.

Comment left by: Peter Leyssens (leyssens@yahoo.com)

Having attempted some astrophoto myself, I'm very, very impressed with this shot. It looks like a good scan from Sky&Telescope :-) I'm surprised the shot comes out so contrasty. I bet Little Blair Valley has better nights than Belgium ! The telescope itself looks like it's an impressive piece of equipment. There's hardly any coma in the stars, even near the edge.

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