This is entry 16 in the Messier catalogue - the Eagle nebula. It's in the southern sky at this time of year, and sinking fast - it's visible between dark and the tree line for just 2 hours. This image was collected over 3 nights, and I had to drag my telescope practically into the street to see it.

Though it looks just like a nebula, M16 is actually a young open cluster of stars embedded in a huge cloud of hydrogen - the red colour in the image. This is a region of space made famous as the "Pillars of Creation" imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the Pillars of Creation. The Eagle Nebula lies in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, in the constellation Serpens.

This cluster is around 5700 light years away and contains an estimated 8100 stars - hence the bright illumination of the surrounding gas cloud. This cluster is young, maybe 2 million years old.

There are 2 other catalogued objects in the frame - SH2-48 and NGC6605. Both these objects are too faint for my telescope to distinguish anything at all.

Interesting note: Stewart Sharpless was a lecturer in astronomy at the University of Rochester between the 50s and the 70s - he is still remembered by some older graduates. He did much of his work on his Sharpless Catalogue of HII regions (the "Sh2" in Sh2-48) at the Mees observatory, here in Naples.