We are camped just south of the town of Why, AZ, about 60 miles south of Gila Bend, and about 22 miles north of the border. The night  skies have been clear and full of stars, begging to be looked at and photographed. Out came the telescope and camera equipment!

I have been working on developing a plan to photograph the Pleiades (7-Sisters). It requires a rather large FOV (field of view), and will require many images stitched together. That I can do! But then comes the exposure. What is interesting about Pleiades is the Bluish halo around the stars, and the nebulae contained around the star group. Here is an image from APOD (Jan 9, 2006), photographed by Robert Gendler.

My target area this night is in the upper right corner of that image. Below is an overlay of my 60 second exposure (then images stacked for a total of 600 seconds). The overlay is on top of the Autostar Suite star map, showing the position of the image. I don't have the blue yet, and the nebulae is not showing up. I guess I will have to play with longer exposures.

Normally, I use 15 second exposures, but tonight, tried both 30 and 60 second shots. Here are the actual images.

10 exposures 30 Seconds at F/3.3	10 exposures 60 Seconds at F/3.3

I also played with M42 (and M43), with different exposures and focal reducers. Interesting results. The large white mass in these images is really 4 separate stars, called the "Trapezium". These 4 stars are clearly visible with the 24mm lens, as well as the 15 Sec exposure at f6/3, below. In these images, the four stars "merge", and "blossom" with the extended image times. M43 (a separate star and nebulae) is seen in the 4 f/3.3 images, just slightly lower and to the right of the Trapezium.

10-15Sec f/3.3	10-30Sec f/3.3	10-45Sec f/3.3	10-60Sec f/3.3

10-15Sec f/6.3	10-30Sec f/6.3	10-45Sec f/6.3

When I image M42 from the house in Tempe (thus the city lights, etc), with 30 seconds at f/6.3, I get brilliant reds. Where did they go??Ahhhhhh, still so much to learn.