Category: Astrophotography

Here we have the Sagittarius Star Cloud taken Friday night with a Canon EOS 800D and 75-300mm kit lens at 80mm. ISO 3200 and about 40 sixty second frames stacked. It’s in the center and looks like you had pressed your left thumb against the glass. The bright clump in the lower left is the Lagoon Nebula and the one two the right, horizontal to the cloud and halfway to the edge is the Eagle Nebula. This is toward the center of our galaxy and a busy part of the sky.According to Wikipedia, “The Sagittarius Star Cloud (also known as Messier 24 and IC 4715) is a star cloud in the constellation of Sagittarius, approximately 600 light years wide, which was discovered by Charles Messier in 1764. It is sometimes known as the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud to distinguish it from the Great Sagittarius Star Cloud located to the north of Gamma Sagittarii and Delta Sagittarii.”.

This is the North American Nebula (aka NGC 7000) in the constellation of Cygnus. This was taken with a Canon EOS 800D and kit 75-300mm Zoom at f5.6. ISO was 3200 and this is a stack of about 40 60 second images stacked together. It’s right in the middle with the star Deneb (part of the Summer Triangle) to the right. I had the camera on a tracking mount. You can easily see “Mexico” and stubby “Florida” (I think sea level rise has claimed the southern end). This nebula is a so-called emission nebula where the cases are warmed by the embedded stars causing it to glow with a distinctive pinkish color.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I set up my 11″ Elf with the Hyperstar so I could shoot at f/1.9 and added an Optolong L-eNhance filter to the setup. This filter blocks most light but lets the reddish Hydrogen-alpha line, the blueish Hydrogen-beta line, and the greenish Oxygen III through so that your color camera can still do RGB photography. I used my ZWO ASI294MC Pro.

I’ve shot the Eagle Nebula before, just a couple weeks ago even, but I think this is my best so far. I don’t think I’ve ever shot the Helix or Crescent Nebulae before so it was nice to have them come out this well.

Click on the images for full size.