It’s been a very cloudy summer so far. I haven’t been able to image since June! I was also having a lot of problems with the stock focuser on my SkyWatcher imaging Newtonian, and I wanted to wait until my new Starlight 2″ focuser arrived before I started another big project. Thankfully, it arrived and works wonderfully, and I, surprisingly, had three clear nights in a row this week. I decided to try a nebula, since I don’t do many of them in favor of galaxies.
I usually would get a few more nights of data, but this data was really good and processed very nicely. I was absolutely shocked at all the dark nebulosity I was able to capture! This is a surprisingly bright reflection nebula that lends well to my one-shot-color camera. The guiding was phenomenal all three nights, and I believe I get tighter focus with the new focuser. I captured 20 hours of data in total.
