As we head towards Winter, many of the summer imaging objects begin to disappear from the sky. The Eagle Nebula (M16) is not visible from my site here in Charlotte as it never rises above the surrounding trees and houses. This image was taken in Northern Indiana with my very basic portable setup--a WO GT-71 21st anniversary edition scope with FR/FF, a DS10C imager and L-eXtreme filter, and a venerable, first-generation iOptron SmartEQ Pro mount. The edge stars are distorted because I have not yet found the correct spacing distance for the FR/FF on the GT-71. The spacing on the 21st Anniversary Edition is different from the standard scope (even though WO tech support denies this--but it is impossible to achieve focus with the scope using their recommended spacer setup).
This image represents about one hour of total integration time (30-second subs). It is a wide field view of the nebula and you can just see the Eagle at the center (see cropped image and/or click and zoom). I manually dithered the scope every 20 integrations. This final image is a crop of the original capture.
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