M8

The Last of California

 in Blog  tagged Barnard's Loop / conjunction / M20 / M78 / M8 / Moon/Mars / occultation / orion

No, California isn’t going away, this is just the last photo from my recent trip down there.  This is M78, captured with the SVX80T at f/6, and the ASI1600 camera.  I shot the same target last year with the WO Star71, which has a significantly wider field of view, and also got it from the remote observatory in Australia with a somewhat narrower field of view.  I’ve repeated the effort because none of these captures has been entirely satisfactory.  This one is better than I expected given that it was captured in just 6 hours or so, over the last […]

Lagoon, Trifid, and Cat’s Paw

 in Blog  tagged Cat's Paw Nebula / Lagoon Nebula / M20 / M8 / narrowband / ngc6334 / Trifid Nebula

Last weekend’s star party was relatively relaxing, largely because the target I was after could be photographed for only a few hours each night, so I got to bed by 2 or 2:30 each night.  The target was 3 nebulae in the constellation Sagittarius, the Lagoon (M8), Trifid (M20), and Cat’s Paw (NGC6334).  All of these are primarily emission nebulae, but are often photographed in broadband color (RGB) to include some reflection components, especially the blue region on the north side of M20.  North is down in this photo, and this blue region shows only very faintly as a light […]