back to M20

Not much time for shooting lately, which is unfortunate-the seeing has been great. Lots of time poured into efforts to improve my tracking quality, and not much to show for that either. Oh well; so it takes a long time to get the pics I want.

This is the stack I started a few days back, but with another half hour added. The nebula looks more or less as bright, but the stars are starting to look far more natural, and the fainter wispy cloudiness at the fringes is starting to come through. With a "short" stack, when the faint stuff is amplified the stars all become bloated white blobs. The more light I add to the stack, the less it needs to be stretched, and the more natural the appearance is overall. I should be able to add another couple of hours to this before it has passed from the summer sky. As I add more subs, I can remove some of the first ones I shot with the potato-shaped stars also.

The Lagoon Nebula, M8, is just about two frames below M20; they are often photographed together, but I can't get any wide angle shots with my setup.