SUNSET: 
0
Photographer:
Jon Greif
Location of Photo:
Alpine, CA, USA
Date/Time of photo:
July 6-7, 2024, between 9:30 pm and 3 am PDT
Equipment:
ZWO Seestar S50 smart scope (50 mm aperture, 250 mm focal length). Pixinsight processing software.
Description:
The Trifid Nebula is a colorful combination of nebulae types that lies approximately 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. The Trifid Nebula was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5th, 1764, and is M20 in his catalog. M20 includes a unique combination of an open cluster of stars, a Hydrogen emission nebula (the red portion), a reflection nebula (the blue portion), and dark nebulae (the black streaks separating the lobes). This image of the Trifid Nebula was captured last night from our backyard in Alpine using a Seestar S50 "smart" scope and consists of 984 10-second exposures, stacked and processed with Pixinsight software.
