The Eagle Nebula (Messier 16 or NGC 6611), also known as the Star Queen Nebula or The Spire, is a relatively dim emission nebula around a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the "Pillars of Creation" area made famous in images by the Hubble Space Telescope. IC 4703 is the diffuse emission nebula or HII region associated with M 16. While the open cluster is easily identified through an average telescope, the nebula is only barely perceptible with a large aperture telescope in extremely dark skies.

This image is a stack of fifty ten-minute exposures (8.33 hours) taken with my QHY247C one-shot color astrophotography camera at a gain of 4000 and offset of 255. The images were taken through my Celestron 11" Edge HD OTA on my CGE Pro. The images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and post processed in PixInsight with a final touch-up in Photoshop.

Image Center:	View full size annotated image.
Right Ascension:	18h 18m 50.209s (274° 42m 33.132s)
Declination:	-13° 48m 41.362s
Orientation:	Up is 0.7 degrees East of North.
Image Size:	28.411' x 18.559'	Pixel Scale:	0.288"

Principal objects in field: Eagle nebula, M 16, NGC 6611

All identified catalog objects: HD 168075, HD 168076, HD 168137, IC 4703, NGC 6611