Rho Ophiuchi with Rokinon 135mm

The main reason for purchasing the Rokinon 135mm was a quest to shoot Rho Ophiuchi, an object I wanted to shoot for a long time. It stands out for its multiple bright colours, vivid dust lanes and even has a star cluster. After learning about it some time ago, I realized it was too big […]

Imaging the Horsehead Nebula

Another cold winter session and I’m trying out my new LifePixel modified Nikon D5300. The h-alpha response is incredible. I can finally see strong dark red signal registering. This is a great improvement over my D3200 camera. In addition, I have stopped using dark frames. It is too time consuming and a pain to accurately […]

First astroimaging session with Guiding

My first astrophotography with guiding. Its incredible how drastic the improvement is. By exposing longer, not only do you get so much more detail, but you eliminate any tracking issues that cause star trails. HDR image consisting of: 10 subs x 180 seconds8 subs x 60 seconds Stacked 9 subs x 180 seconds in DSS […]

Bortle 2 trip to Nirvana

Decided to take a trip to one of the darkest places in southern Ontario. Nirvana AKA Irvine Lake Strip is a Bortle 2 area just north of Bon Echo Provinical Park. I setup my Orion ST80 on an AVX mount with a Nikon D3200 camera. All images were tracked for around 60 seconds each, some […]