I have not posted in a while being too busy during good seeing conditions for late nights in August, and poor weather in September. The several times I did get out I was not able to capture enough data for good images but if I get time one day I should go back and see what I can do with a few of them.
I was able to find a good steady night on the 15th with a crescent moon that set early enough to provide very good dark sky conditions. Tracking was going very well and the Pacman Nebula was high in the sky for some great imaging. This represents a somewhat longer run for me with even longer exposures. About 23 frames at 400 seconds each or around 2 1/2 hours total.
The Pacman, also known as NGC281 is a bright emission nebula in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia and is part of the Milky Way. This image is cropped a bit but represents the relatively distortion free field of view with my current setup. I am using the Orion 6″ astrograph reflector at 600mm focal length and my Canon T1i which is still unmodified. This means I don’t get as much of the fainter red nebulosity. Since I am doing very simple processing with Photoshop, my stars are more prominent than would show in a sophisticated process separating the nebula from the star field. This would be a good base image to learn some more processing techniques when I can find the time!
