Just about two years ago I photography the 32 objects in the summer chapter of Turn Left at Orion. Not thinking I would ever exhibit those pieces, I shot .jpg only, but, lo, I have been invited to a fabulous exhibition towards the end of the year (details eventual) that will allow me to produce both star fields and pinhole works.
I just returned from the CAO, a new moon weekend, and stayed up until 4am on Saturday evening to re-photograph in RAW the open clusters from the summer chapter, and all the others that Sky Safari identified as being visible that night. 29 objects in total, listed below, plus M31 and 31 (at bottom) because I was there.
I did manage to shoot some darks in the midst of it, but totally forgot to finish the night with some more in spite of trying to remind myself of it. I used Antares and Deneb, variously, to lock focus, and got a bit frustrated that I worked too slowly to stay on the east side of the meridian. By the time I got to M26, the scope flipped and I needed to refocus. But when I re-pointed to M26, the scope flipped again. On Phil’s encouragement I skipped a few objects to return to later, in favour of getting to objects further east and north in the galaxy. Of course, by 3:45am when I returned to M26, M11, and M73, I didn’t have the energy to get the focus right. And I found myself re-aligning the scope at 2am, which definitely improved my pointing (even though I took my time and used the 14mm reticle eyepiece to align earlier).
I have some ideas for what I will do with these for the exhibition, and for direct positive pinholes…looking forward to working through it.
Oh yeah, last night, though I packed up early, I saw M17, Omega Nebula (part of the Swan, which I’ve imaged previously but never looked at) – very lovely with my 24mm eyepiece.
M62
M6
M7
M11
M18
M20
M21
M23
M24
M25
M26
M29
M34
M39
M52
M73
M103
NGC 457
NGC 559
NGC 663
NGC 752
NGC 869
NGC 884
NGC 6451
NGC 6882
NGC 6888
NGC 7243
NGC 7635
NGC 7789
Andromeda galaxy, rough pshop hack with a few darks and stack of 2