Astrophotography Expedition to Utah

A couple of weeks ago, I was working in Mesquite, Arizona, so we hauled my scope out for some dark skies and high elevation in southern Utah. Of course, it was a full moon, and the scope was never taken from the case. This is a 30 second exposure, with the camera resting on the hood of my truck. At midnight.

This photo shows two things-one, moonlight is just sunlight-leave the shutter open a bit, and you can't tell it from daylight, except that if you look hard, you will see that the sky has stars in it. Two, it shows just how hard it can be to get good images of deep sky objects when there are other sources of light around.