I’ve photographed this spectacular object many times in the past, but I return to it with every new opportunity.
It is one of the largest, the brightest and the most beautiful and colorful deep sky objects in the Southern night sky. It is a great object to start learning astro – photography with. One will improve his / hers imaging techniques with every new image produced, but every new image will provide a new challenge for photographer. For me, the challenge is in producing the image in its full visible spectrum of colors, but with the aid of only very moderate equipment, free image stacking and processing software and without the use of any optical filter. The atmospheric conditions are critical for achieving this goal. The evening of January 1, 2016 provided perfect opportunity with temperatures around 10 degrees, very dry and still air and minimal artificial light around my observing site.
The final image is a stack of 20 single images 30s each. I used minimal post-processing. No guiding of any sort. Absence of star trails is a result of a perfect equatorial mount alignment, using my own method.