Triffid redux

I think I am making some real progress here. This is one of my old favorites, the home of the Triffids...known to less geeky people as Messier Object number 20. If this fails to impress, look back a few posts...it was one of the last things my trusty 300D ever photographed, and is now one of the first for the 40D. This one looks a little more like the pictures the Big Boys take. There simply is no comparison. It's not all down to the new camera; I am still learning the ways of Digital Sky Stacker as well.

I am sure I have mentioned it before; one of the lovely things about this nebula is the presence of all three types of gaseous nebula-the red areas are dust and gas that have been heated by new stars within, enough so that the gas is now emitting light of its own. The bluish areas are reflection nebulae-they are not themselves producing any light, just reflecting that from local stars. The dark lanes are dense clouds of dust, and oddly enough often house the brightest and hottest stars of all-just hidden from us in visual wavelengths.