Butterfly Nebula

This is the Butterfly Nebula (IC 1318) in Cygnus, taken in late July 2014. I used a #15 yellow filter and the processing technique described here. The bright star at the bottom center is Sadr. Open cluster NGC 6910 is located on the lower right.

Butterfly Nebula (IC 1318) in Cygnus; ST80 on Vixen SP; #15 yellow filter; Canon EOS Rebel T3; 25x90 lights @ ISO-3200; 16 darks; 16 flats

2014 Perseids

The weather here was great for viewing the Perseids this year, but the waning Moon was very bright. I didn't stay up to watch the show. Instead, I set up the cameras and let them do all of the work. This year's haul wasn't spectacular, but I did catch a few.

I set up the Canon T3 (1100D) on the telescope mount. It caught at least three meteors, but they are very faint because the Moon is just outside of the frame. The best images came from my new fisheye lens on the Canons XS (1000D):

The meteor is a very small streak located on the right, above and to the left of the lens flare near the constellation Lyra.

This meteor is a fireball located to the right and slightly below the center.

This fairly bright meteor crosses the Milky Way through Cygnus.

The following are time-lapse movies that I compiled with the individual frames from both cameras.

And, finally, a star trail image from the fisheye lens. One of the reasons that I like star trails is that they help bring out the natural colors of the stars.