M16 Eagle Nebula

The Eagle Nebula is in the constellation Serpens.  It is about 7000 light years away.  It is around the nucleus of the Milky Way galaxy.  In the center of the nebula is a famous area called the pillars of creation.  It is a dark gaseous are where stars are being formed.  The Eagle Nebula is an emission nebula meaning the gases are giving off photons.  Notice all the different dark areas within the nebula and how many of them are columns.  The 3 pillars in the center are enlarged in a Hubble Telescope image.  The image was taken in my back yard with a 104mm APO triplet refractor with auto guiding.  The moon was at 50% full. Taken June 21 2018.  Sub frames were 5 minutes each. Camera is ZWO ASI071MC Pro cooled to -10C. 2.5 hours of light frames. 1 hour of dark and 100 flat frames and 500 bias frames.  Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Photoshop.  Camera was set to 96 gain and data was in raw format.