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Yeah - I've seen a lot of images of the Veil Nebula before, but I had only been aware of the Eastern and Western Veils which I figured were just two halves of the explosion remnants. Maybe it's just my imagination, but in this image it appears that there's a ring of ionized gases centered...

The "Veil Nebula" is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust left over from a massive supernova that occurred 10,000 years ago when a star 20 times more massive than the Sun and ~2,100 light-years away ended its life in a spectacular explosion. The event would have appeared brighter than...

If you are upgrading to a dedicated astrocam from a DSLR, I would recommend starting with a one-shot color first before making the (giant) leap into mono imaging.

That's difficult for me to comment on, Jim. My mono cameras are only used for auto-guiding so I have no work of my own to compare them.

Telescope: Esprit 100 ED Imaging camera: ASI2600MC-Pro Mount: CEM40 Guide camera: ASI290MM w/OAG 155 x 120 sec, plus Flats, Dark Flats, and Darks NINA for framing, focusing, and image sequencing, PHD2 for autoguiding, and PixInsight for stacking and post-processing.

It worked better than I expected. The Sigma lens is nowhere near the quality of Canon "L" glass or a good triplet refractor, but the image turned out reasonably good, with not too much distortionn in the stars. There is still some flaring of star shapes in the corners, but at 250mm it was...

Hi Jim, Someone asked a similar question in this post.

The Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) is a spiral galaxy 21 million light-years from Earth and is about 170,000 light-years across. It contains an estimated 1 TRILLION stars, 5-10 times more than in our own Milky Way.

115 x 180 sec Lights, no filter 43 x 300 sec Lights with Optolong L-eXtreme filter Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats for calibration SkyWatcher Esprit ED100 ASI2600MC-Pro camera CEM40 mount ASI290mm on OAG guide camera Auto-guiding by PHD2 Image capture by NINA Stacked and processed in Pixinsight

60 x 180sec Lights Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats for calibration SkyWatcher Esprit ED100 ASI2600MC-Pro camera CEM40 mount ASI290mm on OAG guide camera Auto-guiding by PHD2 Image capture by NINA Stacked and processed in Pixinsight

Mike, This is my first dedicated, cooled astrocam so I don't have anything to compare it to other than my DSLR, and it obviously blows that away. The camera's performance is very good, but many people (including me) have experienced issues with USB connections. This camera is very finnicky...

Sorry for the long delay in responding (didn't enable the "watch" feature). The info is included in the original post: 80 x 15 sec + 60 x 30 sec + 40 * 120 sec + 20 * 240 sec Lights, all integrated into an HDR composite. It took about a week to get it right. :)

ASI2600MC-Pro Sigma 150-600mm Lens @ 250mm CEM40 mount ASI120MM-Mini guide camera on ASI 30mm guide scope Autoguiding with PHD2 60 x 240 sec Lights Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats for calibration Stacked and processed in PixInsight

ASI2600MC-Pro Canon 135mm F/2L USM Lens CEM40 mount ASI120MM-Mini guide camera on ASI 30mm guide scope Autoguiding with PHD2 Image sequencing with NINA 94 x 120sec Lights + 130 x 60 sec Lights over 2 nights Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats for calibration Stacked and processed in PixInsight

Date: 6-Feb-2021 Telescope: SkyWatcher Esprit 100 Mount CEM 40 Imaging camera: ASI2600MC-Pro Guide camera: ASI290MM-mini Imaging software: NINA and PHD2 Post-processing software: PixInsight 60 x 180sec Lights 20 Darks 32 Flats 32 Dark Flats

Date: 5-Feb-2021 Telescope: SkyWatcher Esprit 100 Mount CEM 40 Imaging camera: ASI2600MC-Pro Guide camera: ASI290MM-mini Imaging software: NINA and PHD2 Post-processing software: PixInsight (usign HDR composition) 80 x 15 sec + 60 x 30 sec + 40 * 120 sec + 20 * 240 sec Lights 20 Darks 32 Flats...

Date: 6-Feb-2021 Telescope: SkyWatcher Esprit 100 Mount CEM 40 Imaging camera: ASI2600MC-Pro Guide camera: ASI290MM-mini Imaging software: NINA and PHD2 Post-processing software: PixInsight 95 x 180sec Lights 20 Darks 32 Flats 32 Dark Flats

The entire transit took 0.78 seconds; here's a real-time video of it. You can also see a couple pairs of sun spots straddling the path of the ISS.

Celestron C6 with 0.63x FR ZWO ASI2600MC-Pro imaging camera CEM40 mount 1/1000 sec exposures at 20 FPS Composited using Photoshop