Hubble vs. My Backyard's Scope!

First of all, happy B'day Hubble Space Telescope! Still the OG space-based telescope that changed our perspective of the Universe.

For the B'day, NASA/ESA released an image of a section of the Trifid Nebula (left). You can see a nodule from inside the nebula and a thin stellar jet formed by a young stellar object buried inside the cloud. That's about 0.75 light-years in length.

On the right is my 1-hour photo from my backyard - and the jet appears there too!

Unlike Hubble, my backyard rig only has a 20cm aperture and has a whole lot of atmosphere, as well as city lights, to deal with.

So it is really neat to be able to get that level of detail in 1 hour of observing.

See the original Hubble image here: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Hubble_turns_36_with_a_dazzling_Trifid_Nebula_portrait

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📸 A Beautiful Trifid
Red emission. Blue reflection. Dark dust. The Trifid Nebula (M20) in Sagittarius blends all three. Star formation shapes its glowing clouds, while dark lanes split the red core into three parts. A cosmic gem, 5,000 light-years away.

📅 APOD – July 9, 2025
📷 Credit: Alessandro Cipolat Bares

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The Light, Dark, and Dusty Trifid

Messier 20, popularly known as the Trifid Nebula, lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane of our galaxy, the Trifid does illustrate three different types of astronomical nebulae; red emission nebulae dominated by light from hydrogen atoms ...

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Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Edelmaier and Gabriele Gegenbauer

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