Holiday Widefield Images
August 30th, 2011
I have been on Holiday for two weeks to the Aveyron region of France with the extended family, a region noted for caves, castles and canyons, and for not having much in the way of flat surfaces. We made the most of it with canoeing down the Lot valley with my wife early on a misty morning and decending into the spectacular Gauffre de Padirac cave systems being the highlights. We also spend a few days camping further south near Carcassonne at Lastours for more castle exploring and a day at the beach.
Needless to say though the roof box contained my Vixen Sphinx mount, my camera and a few telescopes most of which I did not make use of as I ended up finally taking out the Canon EF 50mm lens I bought over a year ago for astrophotography and making use of it for something other that pictures of the wife and kids.
The second week of our holiday saw the moon waning and provided the ideal nights, however the weather was changeable and though I spent two nights out only one gave a full evening of clear skies.
Cygnus Central Region
Cygnus was the target for the first night being well placed above me and offering a rich area for widefield imaging. I wanted to capture the North American and Sadr Butterfly nebula regions though I notice that the Cocoon makes an appearance as well in the bottom left. Many other objects are visibly and I think this one came out the best.
- 33 x 5 minutes (bias, flat and dark applied)
Cassiopeia
The second night saw intermittent cloud until midnight which then cleared till 3am. A very frustrating night and this region was not my actual target. However after the troubles trying to get something worth having from the Sagittarius / Scutum area it was a relief to use my last hour or so to quickly gather some data from this region. The framing is a bit out, it needs to rotate anti-clockwise about 20 degrees.
- 14 x 4 minutes (bias, flat and dark applied)
Sagittarius / Scutum
This was the region I really wanted to photograph and I was saving it for the best possible night, unfortunately the weather didn’t want to play. After being clear all day the clouds rolled in from the south west almost the minute I had everything setup and ready to go. A waiting game then commenced with me comfortable in the boot of the car on my inflatable mattress watching a movie and waiting to see what would happen. I knew that in order to get this region I needed to get started on it as early in the night as possible, so a cloud delay was not good news. As it happen the clouds did eventually clear just after midnight. Unfortunately this was just a little to late for me and allowed for only a few images to be captured before it sunk behind the trees. I’ll leave this as a target for another day.
- 9 x 5 minutes (bias, dark and flat applied)
