The Milky Way- from South Africa

I hoped to take some dark sky pictures whilst I was away, however there was a lot of light pollution from the hotels and local towns.
So I took a chance one night and pointed my Cannon 1100D at the sky.
18(28.8)mm f3.5, 15secs ISO 1600 and hoped for the best.  Just used 6.3M JPEG, well I wasn't sure it would work.
This was 6/9/2013 @20.45 from St Lucia -28.37 South, 32.41 East.
The first one has been a little processed. the cluster is M7, Antares at the bottom of the view. Sag A* is in the top layer of dust, to the right of M7.
Peter Smith

NGC7000

Further testing with the Takahashi focal reducer, taken on 7.9.13 from the Austerfield Observatory. With my M25C I usually get only the upper large part of the nebulosity, the North American (Buffalo) and a touch of the Ferret, but the FR embraces a field a good bit wider without costing much in resolution. I'd hoped to include some nebulosity further to the left, south, of the snout of the Buffalo, but failed. The guiding was done with the H9C on the Vixen with an AP .62 Focal reducer controlled by Astroart5.
Flats and Bias frames were used in the calibration in Astroart, with final processing done in Photoshop.
Not the greatest, but certainly a success for me in terms of a useful piece of kit proved out.

SH2-129

 

 

 I recently bought Dave Adshead's focal reducer for my 106 but it wouldn't focus when used with my M25C camera. And after a prolonged series of trials with different spacers etc., with a dealer of Takahashi telescopes, this is the final test on a faint area of nebulosity in Cepheus recorded in the second catalogue of Stewart Sharpless of "bright" nebulosity. It's also known as the Flying Bat, and is far more extensive than this frame of the brightest part. The FR gives the telescope a focal length of 387mm, but this bit of nebulosity would need a focal length of 150 to 250mm, so mosaicking or a camera lens would be the solution. But I've not enough patience for doing mosaics so I may try my old 135mm Pentax lens, some time in the future.

The night was cloudless but with haze, though the Milky Way could be seen all night. The dew was heavy too, and the car was wringing wet.

The exposure was 220 mins in total, and the guiding was done by my trusty H9C and Astroart. Stacked in Astroart and finally processed in Photoshop.