June 20, 2012 - The day of the Trifid
I set up at home as far down my driveway as possible to improve my viewing angle of this southern sky nebula. I was shooting just over top the house and backyard trees. 
M20 the Trifid Nebula is an emissions nebula in the constellation Sagittarius:  

M20 The Trifid Nebula (2200 lys) - 40 frames x 4 minutes (re-processed in CS2-free, Apr/13)

Spring 2012 - Galaxies:

Our sun is so big you could fit almost 1 million earths in it. It’s an average sized star and it’s only one of 200 billion stars in the Milk Way Galaxy. So… to start wrapping my brain around the fact that other galaxies exist (maybe 400 billion more) is mind blowing. Actually observing and imaging those galaxies… Unreal!!!

This is the Whirlpool Galaxy M51 located under the handle of the Big Dipper estimated to be 37 million light years away. It is home to roughly 100 billion suns (about half as many as our home galaxy , The Milky Way). You can also see neighboring galaxy NGC5195.

I shot 140 - 5.25minute exposures over two nights early last week… I manually selected only 50 of the clearest shots, stacked them and processed colour levels, brightness, contrast and saturation in Gimp.  (Total exposure time is 4 hours, 23 minutes)

Side note: I lost so many of my original shots because part way through the second night the wires hanging from my small guiding scope came in contact with my telescopes focusing knob – As the mount rotated (or tracked) the focuser was turned ever so slightly by the wires, thus defocusing my scope!!! Another hard lesson learned!

The first time I ever observed M51 visually was three years ago, at our club observatory, with our 16” Newtonian Reflector Telescope.

 

M104

I set up at our club observatory and shot M104, the Sombrero Galaxy.

It is a little edge-on galaxy in Virgo and is recognized right away in the eyepiece. I believe it's core is one of the biggest estimated black holes!

I started firing shots by 10pm and was all packed up by 2:30am so I could be chipper at work the next day. In that time I shot 33 – 4minute frames and stacked them for a total exposure of 2 hours, 12 minutes.

The most exciting part of the night was the discovery of a mom raccoon and her four little nursing pups (only days old and furless) who have taken up residence in our main observatory building. We only entered the building to sign in-and-out so we could leave her alone. Her pups squeaked and chirped  the hole time we were there, probably fighting over the best milk supply! There was some satisfaction in knowing this little family was safe from the howling coyotes we were also hearing:

 

November 1, 2011:
After shooting the moon as seen in the last post I slewed to my favourite open cluster, M37. This open star cluster is beautiful to observe in a telescope and when long exposures are shot the colour differences of the star within the cluster are revealed:

M37 Open Cluster (4600 lys) - 22 frames x 3 minutes

December 2, 2011:Lot of work for little results! (but I'm slowly learning). This is ICI434 "The Horsehead Nebula". It is a very adim object right under Orion's eastern belt star (you can see the glare from the star creating the large flare on the left side of this picture). This object is more suited to larger aperture scopes than my 6" SCT.


ICI434 Horsehead Nebula (1500 lys) -  16 frames x 6.25minutes

February 20, 2012:
Orion’s Nebula is a very popular nebula in the constellation of Orion the Hunter.
On February 20^th I noticed it was going to be clear until midnight (very rare these days)… My intention was to image M81, a beautiful spiral galaxy near the big dipper. I was having trouble with computer guiding that close to the northern celestial pole so I decided to shoot M42 to the south.
This image is a combination of 27 – 45 second exposures and 12 – 225 second exposures yielding 1hr 5min total exposure. The short exposures captured the central detail in the nebula while the longer exposures provided the dim perimeter detail. They were manually combined using layer masking in GIMP (my first experience with layer masking). While processing this shot I was also very careful to ‘push’ the colour levels evenly to preserve the natural colour of the nebula, the way my camera ‘saw’ it!
I look forward to shooting more deep-sky images with a variety of exposure lengths so I can further develop my “layer masking” techniques!:

M42 Orion's Nebula (1600 lys) - 27 frames x 45sec & 12 frames x 3.75 minutes

November 1st, 2011:
Continuing to learn to shoot the right exposures and computer processing images.
I decided to image the waxing (almost quarter) moon. This image is a combination of 10 individual frames, 1/640 @ 800 ISO (stacked in Registax).
The central crater with the mountain peak in it's middle is called "Theophilus" (it's centered in the close-up picture). Theophilus is 100 kms in diameter and 3.2 kms deep!

Cropped for a closer look.

October 24th, 2011: Auroras return to Niagara, big time!
I received a call from one of my astronomy friends, letting me know he noticed a slight glow to the north. He shot a couple long exposures to confirm that he was seeing Auroras. Then he grabbed his phone and started calling RASC club members with cameras. I was lucky enough to be on his list. I grabbed my tripod&camera and ran outside and started shooting 18 second exposures at 400 ISO. Over the next hour the display went from dim to amazing!!! It was incredible! These images were taken at the peak:

Psalm 19:1-2   The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship.
Day after day they continue to speak; Night after night they make Him known.  NLT

2011 - My first Deep-Sky Images (continued...):

I set up in my brothers back yard in York, ON for my second nebula July 5th, 2011
M16 The Eagle Nebula:


M27 The Dumbell Nebula taken from my driveway in St. Ann's, ON on July 31, 2011:


M27 The Dumbell Nebula (1250 lys) - 20 x 5 minute exposures

NGC 891 Galaxy taken from my driveway in St. Ann's, ON on Oct 7, 2011:

NGC 891 Galaxy (30 million lys) - 24 x 7 minute exposures = 2.8 hours total exposure



2011 - My First Year of Deep-Sky Imaging:

After buying my "dream mount" SkyWatcher HEQ6pro and all the other gear for long exposure deep-sky astrophotography, I was off to the races:
Test run on May 23, 2011 on M13 (short, unguided exposures):

M13 Star Cluster - 20 x 1minute exposures

First Full set up at CCCA: July 1, 2011 (with help from my astronomy buddies).
M17 The Swan Nebula:

M17 The Swan Nebula (5000 lys) - 26 x 4.25 minute exposures