Astronomy and DSLR Astrophotography Blog

I think it’s not right always showing just the best works you produce. Sometimes it’s also good to represent worse pictures to show the world you also have troubles with everything and to encourage those who are not so good at astrophotography yet. I had a disaster last Thursday, capturing the Rho Ophiuchi region.

Last week we had some clear skies out here and on Thursday I decided to go to the near hill named Bohor to caputre the Rho Ophiuchi region, which is a large cloud of colorful nebulas, a part of Milky Way. June is the only month when this region is accessible to photograph from our latitude because it comes the highest on the night sky – about 20 degrees. Se we had clear skies, warm weather, no moon – perfect astrophotography conditions. I packed my mount Vixen GP-DX with SkySensor 2000 PC to the case with all the accessories and went to the Bohor to take some shots. I arrived there 2 hours before the astronomic night, prepared everything, aligned the mount, focused my modified Canon 350D with Canon 70-200 f/4.0 IS L lens and waited for the night. I started shooting at 23.45 LT. After first two shots I saw that everything works OK and went into the car, watching a movie for two hours. When  the film finished I was planning to take some darks and then to go home but when I checked the destination folder for images on my laptop I immediately noticed that something had gone wrong – THERE WERE JUST 6 PICTURES!!! OMG, I was awake till 4 a. m., getting just 6 frames. There was noting else to do, I had about half and hour till the dawn so I packed up the mount and everything and went home.

Nevertheless, on Sunday I decided give it a try and I processed the image. Honestly, I suspected to be worse, but it’s far from that I was planning to do. So here you have, Rho Ophiuchi nebula, not so perfect:

Rho Ophiuchi region @ 6 x 5min, ISO 800, RAW. Author: Primož Cigler

I hope that next time I will show something more attractive. And which are yours most common troubles you are dealing with?

Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Dark Nebula B334, 336-7 in Aquila
2. Astrophotography How-To Tutorial: intro
3. Orion Belt: M42, M43 and NGC1977
4. Return to astrophotography: NGC2403
5. Astrophotography for beginners: Star trails

astrophotography, personal astrophotography, canon, deep-sky, images, milky way, nebula, stars