On Apr 29, 2021, at 7:16 PM, Roland Christen via groups.io <chris1011@...> wrote:



Hi Astronuts,

I uploaded a second image taken at my Hawaii observatory. While cruising around the southern skies with my 175 refractor, visually, I was struck by the brightness and beauty of this famous object. Now I know that this has been imaged with much more high resolution cameras and scopes, in narrowband and RGB etc, and this image is nowhere near what can be done with even rudimentary equipment. It's just a quick snapshot of a small number of 30 second exposures with my Sony DSLR replacing my 2" eyepiece in the diagonal. No guiding, no processing, just a fun image. It actually looked similar visually in my 2" eyepiece, but without the bright colors that the camera recorded.

I would have been over the Moon if I could have done something like this back 30 years ago with color slide film. Would have taken over an hour, with me glued to a guiding reticle eyepiece, pushing buttons to and fro to keep the guide star on the crosshairs. And then have the film destroyed at the local photo developer (don't laugh, it happened to me a few times).

https://www.astrobin.com/wn85k8/

Rolando