GSSP 2009

Here are my images from GSSP 2009. As usual, the event was great, with excellent skies.

M51. 2 Hours, Meade Schmidt Newtonian guided with Orion ED80. Starlight Express SXVF-M25C camera, Orion Starshoot Autoguider guider.

The Cocoon Nebula is surrounded by tenuous dark nebula. Here I used an Orion ED80 OTA for about 2 hours to shoot both the Cocoon and the dark nebula.

I haven't shot the Eagle nebula in many years. It's a lovely object. This was shot on the first night. Only about an hour's exposure, using the SN10.

The Veil nebula is my favourite dark sky visual object. I can easily spend 15-30 minutes on every dark sky night tracing its path with a UHC filter. Of course what you only see photographically are the beautiful colours it contains.

Here the Cave Nebula (which I had never shot before) ended up being just too much for my little ED80. At 3 hours it still needs a ton more photons. I also needed to break out some noise reduction post processing tools that I really hate using. I'll try this again the next time I'm at a dark site with a bigger OTA.

Though technically not taken at GSSP (it was shot a couple of days after), I figured I'd include this image too. It's probably my best M57. The remarkable thing about it is that it was taken on my back deck, from the city at prime focus of a C11 (2800mm). I typically don't shoot this 'long', but it worked out. I did have to apply some deconvolution to bring out (some would snicker 'create') the max detail, which messed up some of the brighter stars.

I usually end up taking at least one wide field shot on these trips. This is the Sagitarius area of the milky way, taken with a Nikkor 135mm lens. It's amazing how much detail there is to see.