Uploaded June 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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PILLARS OF CREATION
M16 - Eagle Nebula
Constellation: Serpen
Website: lifebeyondstars.com/deepsky

This was an ambitious project and I am super proud of the final results. I set out to shoot and mimic Nasa’s famous photo ‘Pillars of Creation’ which was taken back in 1995 using the Hubble telescope. The pillars exist in the heart of the Eagle nebula at the bottom of our Milky-way core. This experiment was to show that you do not require expensive equipment or huge focal lengths to achieve a good image.

This was shot with my beloved Fujifilm XT-100, SW Star Adventurer 2i and a 135mm Samyang prime lens. For a size comparison, My lens is 67mm in aperture and the Hubble space telescope is 2.4 metres.

With a light-polluted backyard, I had to expose the nebulosity using a duo-narrowband filter that cuts through city light pollution and captures mainly Hydrogen Alpha and ionized Oxygen. I stacked and edited the different passes together to achieve the ‘Hubble palette’ look.

3 Hour exposure
Stacked using Siril
25x Darks, Biases, and Flats
Bortel Scale 3-4
Pillars image credit: nasa.gov/image-feature/the-pillars-of-creation