Thursday, 25 June 2015

Cypress Hills Dark Sky Preserve


June 20 2015
The Lagoon Nebula (M8)
The Lagoon Nebula (M8) and Trifid Nebula (M20)
Nikon 610 + Skywatcher ED80
Skywatcher EQ-3 Synscan + Orion Autoguider 
10 minutes x 3 @ iso 3200 
Stacked in Photoshop

 Finally after weeks of waiting, i finally had another chance to re-visit a real dark sky preserve here in Western Canada, the Cypress Hills Inter-provincial Park. A four hour drive from the city, this park boasts one of the darkest skies in North America. We stayed for three nights but only on the last night i was able to get lucky when there was hardly any wind, cloud and the humidity was at acceptable levels. I wasted no time setting up my scope at the first sight of Polaris and at around 1 a.m when the Milky Way is high enough on the horizon, i slewed the scope towards the constellation of Sagittarius  and did a 10 minute initial exposure. I was elated with the results. The Lagoon Nebula stood out  clearly amidst the sea of stars on my camera screen.
I was able to take twenty more minutes of exposure for a total of thirty as i wanted to image other subjects before the skies get too light .

My Orion Starshoot Autoguider was working wonderfully that night, keeping my mount slow and steady. Dew became a problem later at around 2 a.m so i had to resort on using my wife's hair dryer on the main scope and autoguider.

It was an exhausting 3 days with hardly any sleep at night. The first day dew was such a big problem that i had to pack up the scope. The second night was still very wet with humidity but i had a fan heater to combat the dew, however my autoguider was going nuts that night. The third and last night was the best. Mother nature just cooperated.

This shot is a widefield shot of the  Lagoon Nebula or known as Messier 8 (M8) and on the upper right corner is the equally beautiful Trifid Nebula (M20).

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