Categories
Astrophotography

Some Wide Angle Astro

One of the main reasons I’m still here is I wanted to get in a few sessions of wide angle astro while I’m still at 32 degrees north latitude. This gives me the best opportunities for things in the core of the Milky Way. Tonight the moon sets around 3 AM, so from now on out it really won’t be worth getting up in the early morning.

As far as birding news, a Red-breasted Merganser turned up on the sewage ponds. Brian Nicholas came out for it and while he was here we found 2 Semipalmated Sandpipers, pretty rare for this area.

So what next? I suppose I will head east and maybe stop for a few days somewhere in southeast Arizona. The weather still looks nice for the foreseeable future.

The Blue Horsehead Nebula. A faint reflection nebula in Scorpio, it is large enough to fill the frame at 200mm focal length. The dust reflects blue light from bright stars in part of this interstellar dust cloud. Both this image and the image below were shot at f2.8, gathering light 2-4 times faster than I can with longer focal lengths.
Rho Ophiuchi Nebula Complex in Scorpio. It has been a long time since I’ve done this particular scene. For this image I used a Zeiss 135mm f2 lens and tracking was done on the Losmandy G11. Using this arrangement, I can dither with the autoguider and it really makes a big difference. This is by far the best image I’ve created of the Rho Ophiuchi Nebula Complex.

As always, right click on the image and open in a new tab/window to see a larger version.