crescent nebula


Wider…Wider…

In my earlier attempt to capture the Spaghetti Nebula I found that the 200mm camera lens wasn’t quite wide enough.  And that a faster (lower focal ratio) lens would also be beneficial.  So I put an 85mm f/1.8 Nikkor lens (stopped down to f/2.8) on the QSI camera and tried again last night.  It didn’t work.  The moon was full last night, and even with a 3nm H-alpha filter, there was enough sky illumination to almost completely overpower the Spaghetti.  I’ll try it again when the Moon goes away, but I have to comment again on what this says about […]


Astronomy Season has (Finally) Arrived

Over the past week we’ve had some really great weather here in the Pacific Northwest, and I took advantage of the clear skies to start the astronomy season – with astro-photography, of course.  There are some dark-sky star parties going on as a write this, and I didn’t go because there is too much work to do at home, but that didn’t keep me from opening up the observatory and starting some semi-automated captures. The target this time was NGC6888, the Crescent Nebula.  This is a popular target in the Cygnus constellation, and is often photographed, both in natural color […]