Date/time: August 4, 2008 1:50am
Location: Victoria Center Observatory, Observatory Hill, Victoria, BC

Saggitarius was fairly low in a murky part of the SW sky, but I decided to try photographing the Eagle Nebula anyway. In the past, we have found that less-than-ideal sky conditions don't seem to affect photos of nebulae as much as other deep sky objects.

My Hutech-modified dSLR captured a great deal of nebulosity, and although the sky conditions worsened the star bloat SCTs exhibit anyway, I'm still very pleased with the result. The Ha regions are bright, showing off the contrast with the dust clouds in this famous nebula.

Camera: Hutech-modified Canon XTi dSLR mounted prime focus
Telescope: Meade LX200 14" SCT operating at f/10, mounted on a Paramount ME
Exposure: 1 minutes, ISO: 1600
Frames: 39 used out of 52 taken

Processing:

• ImagesPlus 3.5: digital RAW to FITS development; dark frames applied (no flats or bias); manual graded; auto alignment; stacked using average; aggressive digital development (BP 612, BG 0); star size reduction (1.4), cropped.
• Corel PhotoPaint X3: mid-tone stretch; 48 bit to 24 bit RGB conversion.
• ACDSee Pro 2: refined crop; fine tuned contrast stretch using Shadow/Highlight tool; resized and saved to jpg.