March 27, 2018
I got up at 2 AM Monday morning to take advantage of a few hours of moonless, dark night sky.
This is the Lagoon Nebula (M8) and the smaller nebula is the Trifid. Both are
in the constellation Sagittarius. I've done these before but they are at such a low
altitude, conditions need to be really good. I think this is a good result, worth getting up early for!
Monday evening, I was outside shortly after sunset and noticed some strangely glowing clouds in the west. I set up a tripod and took some images, it turns they were high altitude ice crystals left over from a naval missile launch west of San Diego, CA. Spaceweather.com wrote an article about it and linked to my photo. Their website does not allow a link to an individual article, so I copied it HERE.
Last night, I got up early again, this time for the Rho Ophiuchi nebula complex in the constellation Ophiuchus. This is my favorite region of the sky for wide angle photography. Although I've done this twice before, last night the results were pretty spectacular, I think. I had perfect focus and stable atmosphere. I used a Zeiss Sonar 135mm f1.4 lens on a Canon 7D MII, tracking with an AstroTrac. Settings were one minute exposures at f2.8, ISO 1600, 77 exposures stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Images Plus and Photoshop.
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