North America Nebula
The North America Nebula is a large and colorful emission nebula, immense clouds of ionized gases throwing off their own light. It is 1,500 light years distant from earth and in the night sky it appears as large as 4 full moons. While it is large and bright for a nebula, it is too dim to be seen with the naked eye. But I use a "go to" tripod and mount that can guide a telescope to thousands of galaxies, nebulae and stars. It can not only point the camera precisely to the object, it also tracks the target's movement across the night sky so that the stars remain points of light even with exposure times (the time the shutter is open) of 5 minutes.
This composite photo is a stack of 35 photos, each 5 minutes long, so light was collected for close to 3 hours. I lounged in my sleeping bag nearby, keeping track of the progress of collecting photos with an iPad mini. On each of the nights I turned off the mount and camera at about 4 am, as light began to appear on the eastern horizon.
Best seen on a bright screen in a dark room
North America Nebula
The North America Nebula is a large and colorful emission nebula, immense clouds of ionized gases throwing off their own light. It is 1,500 light years distant from earth and in the night sky it appears as large as 4 full moons. While it is large and bright for a nebula, it is too dim to be seen with the naked eye. But I use a "go to" tripod and mount that can guide a telescope to thousands of galaxies, nebulae and stars. It can not only point the camera precisely to the object, it also tracks the target's movement across the night sky so that the stars remain points of light even with exposure times (the time the shutter is open) of 5 minutes.
This composite photo is a stack of 35 photos, each 5 minutes long, so light was collected for close to 3 hours. I lounged in my sleeping bag nearby, keeping track of the progress of collecting photos with an iPad mini. On each of the nights I turned off the mount and camera at about 4 am, as light began to appear on the eastern horizon.
Best seen on a bright screen in a dark room