June 12, 2023

Surprised to discover the sky clear for a second straight night, particularly considering how much cloud cover there had been around sunset, I headed out with the star tracker for another round of deep sky astrophotography. This time the target was the North America Nebula. I had targets I was more interested in but it would have required setting up shop a lot further from the house than I wanted to go. You know, laziness.

This time I learned the importance of a stable base. The previous night I was set up on a deck, a nice flat hard surface. And I had to reject almost no frames as a result. But this night I set up on grass, a somewhat spongy surface and ended up rejecting a half dozen frames. Not the end of the world but little things matter a lot with this kind of photography.

This is an emission nebula that actually occupies a space in the sky ten times that of the moon. It’s just much less bright, so it is very hard to see with the naked eye unless you are in an extremely dark area. It is about 2,500 light years from Earth.