The Trifid Nebula (also Messier 20 and NGC 6514) is a H II region in Sagittarius. It is a combination of an open cluster, an emission nebula, a reflection nebula and finally a dark nebula (Barnard 85) cutting the object in 3 and giving it its name.
The object angular size (about 20 arc minutes, or 2/3 of a full moon) is perfect for Moana’s field of view. I also like the color combinations, and contrast of the dark nebulas. I did a quick processing (as above) to assess current quality, which is OK, although a few more frames may need to be dropped.
I intend this image to be part of a larger mosaic, also including the Lagoon nebula, currently acquired.
Luminance has been added for those wishing to do LRGB processing. I am on the edge regarding the usefulness of Luminance data: it takes time away from RGB or SHO, and if it permits to possibly go deeper, it increases the number of saturated stars, at least on my 14 bits camera. In the past I have always used pseudo luminance (stack of RGB), which does not saturate as the stack can be done on 32 or 64 bits images on the computer. But I may be overlooking something. So I would be interested to hear users feeback on the subject, either on the comments below, or by pm on my astrobin.