M16/ Ngc 6611- is located in the constellation of Serpens. Also known as the Star Queen nebula, made famous by the Hubble heritage image, "Pillars of creation". The actual 'Pillar' is a dark nebula, these extremely cold dark dust formations are consistently found  within star formation areas rich in hydrogen, like the horse Head nebula. The light of the nebulosity is made up of excited HII gas where its  ions have been excited  from surrounding stars within the nebula. Typically, the open cluster at it's heart would be contributing to much of this. It consists of around 60 stars of 8th mag., these are hot giants of spectral class O & B, born less than 1 million years  ago. The nebula itself was named The Eagle nebula from its shape shown in wider field images. M16 lies 8000 l.y. away.

 Conditions- Taking the Ha channel on the 24th the weather played ball giving me an opportunity to get down 54' worth. Transparency was fair but seeing was poor. Conditions on the 8th were very much the same as the previous run. However, it was relatively cloud free most of the time I was out.