Beautiful skies, indeed. Here is the result of perseverance. I spent the evening of June 20th (2015) with two other astrophotographers from the Flint River Astronomy Club (central Georgia), Alan and Felix. I stood in awe of their rigs. Alan has Celestron C11 Edge mounted on an 1100GTO German Equatorial Mount with Servo Motor Drive, while Felix has an Astro-Physics •130 mm f/6.3 StarFire EDF 'Gran Turismo' Triplet Apochromatic Refractor with 3.5" Focuser (you get put on an 8 year waiting list to get one of t...hese) mounted on an •1200GTO German Equatorial Mount with Servo Motor Drive. Wow, what beauties those beasts are. You can view them in the images below.
The night started out completely clouded over. Ever the optimists, we decided to set up anyway and trust in the weather gods. Finally, at about 12:30 A:M the gods cooperated, and the sky cleared. Felix imaged a dark nebula in Ophiuchus. Alan imaged M17. Not to be outdone, I decided that since Sagittarius was looking so stellar, I would image M17 as well, but also because the last three attempts never were very satisfying for me. I took 22 five-minute images at ISO 800. My perseverance paid off. Here is my result. enjoy:
Here is Alan's badass rig. You can mine in the background:
![[Image: alanscope.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i1012.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Faf250%2Forogenicman%2Falanscope.jpg)
Here is Felix's badass rig:
![[Image: _MG_5381_1.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i1012.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Faf250%2Forogenicman%2F_MG_5381_1.jpg)
Here is the image I took that night:
Messier 17, the Swan Nebula, in Sagittarius
![[Image: a_1_a_1_m17_mxm3c.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i1012.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Faf250%2Forogenicman%2Fa_1_a_1_m17_mxm3c.jpg)
The night started out completely clouded over. Ever the optimists, we decided to set up anyway and trust in the weather gods. Finally, at about 12:30 A:M the gods cooperated, and the sky cleared. Felix imaged a dark nebula in Ophiuchus. Alan imaged M17. Not to be outdone, I decided that since Sagittarius was looking so stellar, I would image M17 as well, but also because the last three attempts never were very satisfying for me. I took 22 five-minute images at ISO 800. My perseverance paid off. Here is my result. enjoy:
Here is Alan's badass rig. You can mine in the background:
Here is Felix's badass rig:
Here is the image I took that night:
Messier 17, the Swan Nebula, in Sagittarius
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
