Yes, this is an amazing image that seems to reveal quite a few new objects.
I'm curious about the distance estimate that was used in the caption. The caption says that Trifid nebula "lies only 5,500 light-years away". This seems to be (quite reasonably) taken from the 2006 Spitzer paper that released the image.
When I read the Spitzer paper, I saw that the estimate (1600 parsecs) was taken from the Lynds and O'Neil paper on the Trifid, which was published in 1986, more than 20 years ago. More recent estimates are available
Presumably the best estimates would be based on photometry for NGC 6514, the star cluster associated with the Trifid. The Lynds and O'Neil estimate was not based on cluster photometry, but rather on a distance estimate to a single star HD 164514, which could never be as reliable.
A photometry study of NGC 6514 done by Kohoutek, Mayer and Lorenz in 1999 found a distance of 2500 to 2800 parsecs (8000 to 9000 light years).
On the other hand, the latest version of the Diaz, et.al. star cluster catalog, here:
http://www.astro.iag.usp.br/~wilton/
gives the distance to NGC 6514 as half the Lynds distance, or 816 parsecs.
This would be 2600 light years.
This figure is taken from WEBDA and is the same as the distance estimate in the 2005 Kharchenko cluster catalog:
http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?J/A%2bA/438/1163
The distance estimates from this cluster catalog are also based on cluster photometry.
It's a bit surprising that astronomers can't seem to nail down the distance to the Trifid a bit more accurately and that there are widely varying estimates that seem to be based on observations of the same star cluster. In any case, I do think that there are more recent estimates for the Trifid based on real cluster photometric data and those are more likely to be reliable than the one from the Lynds and O'Neil paper.
Yes, this is an amazing image that seems to reveal quite a few new objects.
I'm curious about the distance estimate that was used in the caption. The caption says that Trifid nebula "lies only 5,500 light-years away". This seems to be (quite reasonably) taken from the 2006 Spitzer paper that released the image.
When I read the Spitzer paper, I saw that the estimate (1600 parsecs) was taken from the Lynds and O'Neil paper on the Trifid, which was published in 1986, more than 20 years ago. More recent estimates are available
Presumably the best estimates would be based on photometry for NGC 6514, the star cluster associated with the Trifid. The Lynds and O'Neil estimate was not based on cluster photometry, but rather on a distance estimate to a single star HD 164514, which could never be as reliable.
A photometry study of NGC 6514 done by Kohoutek, Mayer and Lorenz in 1999 found a distance of 2500 to 2800 parsecs (8000 to 9000 light years).
On the other hand, the latest version of the Diaz, et.al. star cluster catalog, here:
http://www.astro.iag.usp.br/~wilton/
gives the distance to NGC 6514 as half the Lynds distance, or 816 parsecs.
This would be 2600 light years.
This figure is taken from WEBDA and is the same as the distance estimate in the 2005 Kharchenko cluster catalog:
http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?J/A%2bA/438/1163
The distance estimates from this cluster catalog are also based on cluster photometry.
It's a bit surprising that astronomers can't seem to nail down the distance to the Trifid a bit more accurately and that there are widely varying estimates that seem to be based on observations of the same star cluster. In any case, I do think that there are more recent estimates for the Trifid based on real cluster photometric data and those are more likely to be reliable than the one from the Lynds and O'Neil paper.