NGC7000, The North American Nebula

Fellow Louisville Astronomical Society (LAS) member Frank Kennedy and I spent Friday cleaning and mowing in the hot sun out at the LAS observatory, at Curby, Indiana. Frank left at around 4:00, and I decided to stay a while because although the forecast wasn't very good, the sky appeared to be clearing. Boy did it ever clear (though there was a bit of a breeze, which affected the seeing a bit but kept the dew to a minimum - and it get a bit nippy for summer at the end). I also decided to experiment with the 80mm Williams Optics Megrez Semi-APO mounted on the vintage Astrophysics 142mm f7 Starfire because I have wanted to try my hand at wide field astrophotography for a long time. I mounted my Hutech-modified Canon T1i with a Baader UV/IR cut filter to the Megrez, and used the Astrophysics refractor as a guide scope. After nearly an hour of trying to get decent focus and guiding, it finally settled down, so I took 12 5-minute exposures of NGC7000 at ISO1600, the North American Nebula. This is my first decent widefield image, and I think it came out rather well for a first light with this configuration.

Instrument: Williams Optics 80mm f6 Megrez
Guide Scope: Vintage 142mm f7 Astro Physics Starfire
Mount: Losmandy G11 Gemini 2
Imaging camera: Hutech Modified Canon T1i
Guide Camera: Orion Starshooter Aurtoguide Camera

Image details: 12 x 300sec at ISO 1600

Processed with Camera Raw, Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Maxim DL

No calibration images were used.

Image acquired at the Louisville Astronomical Society James G. Baker Center for Astronomy, Curby, Indiana on July 1, 2016.