The excellent contrast provided by the dark skies was very evident from the very first night we arrived as I was able to capture a high contrast image of the California Nebula in natural color. Equipment: Canon T2i (550D) (astro modified by Gary Honis) iOptron iEQ45Pro Mount Canon 200mm f/2.8 L Lens @ f/4 QHY5L-II Guide Camera / Orion 8 x50 Guide Scope Software: Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8.2 (Ripley) Lightroom 5.6 Light Frames: 9 x180 secs (27 minutes total) @ ISO 1600 Dark Frames: 8 x 180 secs @ ISO 1600 Details about The California Nebula From Wikipedia: The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus. It is so named because it appears to resemble the outline of the US State of California on long exposure photographs. It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a Hβ filter (isolates the Hβ line at 486 nm) in a rich-field telescope under dark skies.[1] It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth. Its fluorescence is due to excitation of the Hβ line in the nebula by the nearby prodigiously energetic O7 star, xi Persei (also known as Menkib) Full details can be found on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Nebula
I took an RGB stack of M33 with the T2i and the Powernewt telescope. Conditions were excellent, and I was able to improve upon my previous efforts shooting this object with more magnification, longer integration times, and a darker sky. Equipment: Canon T2i (550D) (astro modified by Gary Honis) iOptron iEQ45Pro Mount Powernewt 8" Reflector at 568mm and f/2.8 QHY5L-II Guide Camera / Orion 8 x50 Guide Scope Software: Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8.2 (Ripley) Lightroom 5.6 Light Frames: 52 x180 secs (2 hours 36 minutes total) @ ISO 800 Dark Frames: 10 x 180 secs @ ISO 800 Bias Frames 16 x 1/4000th sec @ ISO 800 Flat Frames 10 x 1/160th sec @ ISO 800 Details about The Triangulim Galaxy (M33) From Wikipedia: The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It is catalogued as Messier 33 or NGC 598, and is sometimes informally referred to as thePinwheel Galaxy, a nickname it shares with Messier 101. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and about 44 other smaller galaxies. It is one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed with the naked eye. Full info can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulum_Galaxy
This is a short stack of the Heart Nebula, taken with a Canon 200mm f/2.8 lens acting as my telescope. The spectrum modified DSLR really picks up the glowing hydrogen-alpha emissions well, even with a relatively short exposure time. Equipment: Canon T2i (550D) (astro modified by Gary Honis) iOptron iEQ45Pro Mount Canon 200 f/2.8 L Lens at f/4 QHY5L-II Guide Camera / Orion 8 x50 Guide Scope Software: Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8.2 (Ripley) Lightroom 5.6 Light Frames: 5 x 240 secs (30 minutes total) @ ISO 1600 Dark Frames: 4 x 240 secs @ ISO 1600 Details about The Heart Nebula From Wikipedia: The Heart Nebula, IC 1805, Sh2-190, lies some 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. This is an emission nebula showing glowing gas and darker dust lanes. The nebula is formed by plasma of ionized hydrogen and free electrons. Full Wikipedia article is found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Nebula
