NGC 7000 Preliminary Image

We spent the long weekend in upstate New York at a friends house on the Delaware River. Naturally, I couldn’t resist taking the astrophotography equipment. I took the AstroTrac, the laptop, and everything needed to shoot with my Canon 350D. Friday night was a wash-out, but that was expected. Sunday night looked like it might work, so I set up everything. But by the time I got the boys settled into bed, the fog rolled down the river bed and sent me in. Sunday night looked much better and I ended up setting up then catnapping while the computer took pictures.

I think I’m getting the hang of aligning the AstroTrac. The polar alignment is going faster and I got wonderful tracking for 4 minute exposures. The photo tripod is a bit light-weight for this job, and the Bogen 405 mini gear head is not quite rigid enough, but it works. My first attempts on Sunday night were hit-or-miss and I quickly realized I had forgotten to set the mirror lock up on the camera. Once I did that, and set the mirror settle time in MaximDL to 8 seconds, ever shot came out quite good. I’ll try to post some minimally processed images showing the corners later. For now, I’ve got this preliminary image of NGC 7000, the North American Nebula. I also shot M31, the Andromeda galaxy, and the Double Cluster. Fog eventually moved in, but I’m happy.