Mancamp Astrophotography July 2003

I took the girls up to the mancamp for a week and a half of R&R and set the scope up at Pete and Steph's house on Locke pond.  During the 12 days I was there, I only got out two nights due to lots of haze and clouds.  One night was excellent the other was so-so.  Note, the night I was leaving was perfect!  Anyway, here are the photos...

This is a view toward the center of our galaxy, the milky way.  Right in the center of this photo is the lagoon nebula, and just above it is the trifid nebula (see photo below for a closeup of this region).  Toward the top of this photo you can see m16 and m17, the eagle and swan nebulas.  If you look to the right of the lagoon nebula, use your imagination and you can see the dark horse nebula, an immense area of dark lanes bisecting this part of the milky way.  This photo is a digital stack of two 40 minute exposures taken with a 50mm lens on Kodak LE400 film.

The mass of hyrdogen emission in the right center of this photo is the lagoon nebula, and to the left of it is the trifid nebula (so called because of the dark lane splitting it in three parts).  Close inspection of the trifid nebula will show a blue reflection nebula in the same regiion, this is a result of starlight reflecting off of the interstellar dust in the area.  This photo was taken with the f/7 refractor mounted piggyback at the same time as the above 50mm shot.  It is a digital stack of two 40 minute exposures and one 20 minute exposure.