Taken in early September with a modded 450D. There was a short clear spell this night so I rushed out with mount and camera, used a 17-55 f2.8 @ f3.5. Completely out of practice though so I hadn't realised how poor my focus was. Reducing the image to this size helped though. Stacked in Deep Space Stacker and processed in Photoshop. I found getting rid of the gradients in the image particularly challenging. Not something I've come across on my other images, but this is a FAR wider view so I should have expected this. Guess I should have used the Astronomik CLS Clip filter I had on the shelf, D'oh!

The 3 brighter stars are Altair, Vega and Deneb.

Come on clear skies, I want to try again!

 

Here's a capture of the gorgeous M45 cluster ("the Pleiades" or "Seven Sisters") taken last November. Showing up quite a bit of nebulosity in here.

 

 

Details

• Canon 30D (not modded)
• Canon 70-200mm F4 (at F4)
• Astrotrak on Manfrotto MN28
• Subs @ 240 seconds

 

Well here's a shot of one of the more popular and larged deep sky objects out there, M31 the Andromeda Galaxy.

This is the first object that I've imaged using the Astrotrak TT320X. This is an absolutely fantastic imaging setup for larger objects. Just align, put your camera on it, focus, attach a timed shutter release and let it go. Love using this setup as there's no need for guiding and no need to merge mono exposures to make a colour image.

Finally! This is a composition I tried to capture on a few occasions with my Sac10 CCD imager. Never had much luck because the SAC was not very sensitive at all.

Now here's a shocker. I upgraded my 7D to a stock Canon 30D (unmodded) and it will pick up NGC 1977 in 30 seconds, whereas the Sac could not do so in 2 minutes! The one main difference in the two systems is that I used an IDAS LPS-P1 filter with the sac10 and now have a CLS filter for the EOS 30D

Anyway, here's the shot of M42, M43 and NGC1977 (Running Man).

M42 is the brightest star forming region in the sky, situated a mere 1400 light years from Earth, so what you are seeing is what the nebula looked like 1400 years ago. NGC 1977 is a much dimmer reflection nebula.

I was surprised to get this shot. I've tried to obtain it a few times using a Sac10 but never had any luck. The QHY 6 is WAY more sensitive though (though one does pay for this with a huge drop in resolution).

Would have loved to have got the widefield with the Flaming Star nebula in there as well but the field of view on this teensy camera is, well, teensy.

Taken from a very light polluted Salthill, Galway so the IDAS filter came in handy. Must try this again some time with the Baader 7nm H-alpha filter.