A portrait of the pairing of the Owl Nebula, M97, with the edge-on spiral galaxy M108, below the Bowl of the Big Dipper. The Owl is a magnitude 9.8 planetary nebula in our galaxy about 1700 light years away, while M108 is another galaxy about 32 million light years away, and shining at magnitude 10. There are many very tiny 15th to 18th magnitude galaxies in the field as well, carrying PGC designations. North is to the left in this framing. This is a stack of 20 x 6-minute exposures with the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 1600, through the Astro-Physics 130mm EDT apo refractor at f/6 with the 6x7 field flattener. Autoguiding was with the MGEN3 stand-alone guider which controlled the camera shutter and performed a 5-pixel dithering move between each exposure. The mount was the AP Mach 1. No dark frames or LENR was applied. Aligning and stacking, with a Median blend mode, was with Photoshop, which worked perfectly on this set. Taken from home on a very clear night on April 13-14, 2021.
Red rivals in Scorpius, with bright Mars above dimmer - and more yellow here — Antares below embedded in yellow reflection nebulas. The area is rife with colourful reflection and emission nebulas, making this one of the most colourfull regions of the deep sky. The hot blue stars of the head of Scorpius are at right. This is a stack of 5 x 3-minute exposures with the 135mm telephoto lens at f/2.8 and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. Some light clouds were moving in. They likely add the glow around Mars.
The northern summer Milky Way over Middle Waterton Lake at Driftwood Beach in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta on a July night. Sagittarius is at centre, with the pink Lagoon Nebula, M8, right of centre. The Dark Horse complex of dust lanes is over the peak at right. The Scutum Starcloud is at top centre. The bright object at far left is Jupiter, with dimmer Saturn to the right, with both over Vimy Peak and in Capricornus or thereabouts! This is a blend of tracked exposures for the sky and untracked exposures for the ground: a stack of 4 x 2-minute tracked at f/2.8 and ISO 1600 for the sky, blended with a single 8-minute untracked at f/5.6 and ISO 800 for the ground, taken with Long Exposure Noise Reduction on to eliminate most thermal hot pixels this warm night. A tracked 2-minute exposure through an Kase/Alyn Wallace Starglow filter adds the star glow effect. An additional short 30-second exposure at ISO 400 and f/4 is for the lights of the Prince of Wales Hotel and their reflections, to preevent them from overexposing too much which they would in the long ground exposure. Forest fire smoke moving in added some haze and lowered contrast. The sky tracker was the Star Adventurer Mini which worked perfectly. The camera was the Canon ESO Ra and lens the Canon 15-35mm RF at 15mm.
