This was shot about 10 miles east of Flag near the Winona ext off I-40, even with Flagstaff being a dark sky city it's well worth taking short trips out for very dark skies for imaging. This image was captured through an Orion EON 130mm telescope, an AP Mach1 mount, and a modified Canon T3i camera, and surrounded by howling coyotes that make sure I'm awake. It has an exposure time around 2 hours. Image processing was done in Pixinsight to bring out all the detail buried deep in the image.

Eric Marlatt

The following was retrieved from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifid_Nebula on November 19, 2015

The Trifid Nebula

"The Trifid Nebula (catalogued as Messier 20 or M20 and as NGC 6514) is an H II region located in Sagittarius. It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764. Its name means 'divided into three lobes'. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars; an emission nebula (the lower, red portion), a reflection nebula (the upper, blue portion) and a dark nebula (the apparent 'gaps' within the emission nebula that cause the trifurcated appearance; these are also designated Barnard 85). Viewed through a small telescope, the Trifid Nebula is a bright and peculiar object, and is thus a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers.

The Trifid Nebula is a star-forming region in the Scutum spiral arm of the Milky Way. The most massive star that has formed in this region is HD 164492A, an O7.5III star with a mass more than 20 times the mass of the Sun. This star is surrounded by a cluster of approximately 3100 young stars."

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