M31, 30x90sec, ISO 800

It has been the third time the Borealis Astronomy Club organized its camp in Alba county, Negrilesii Valley. The area is a treasure for astronomy since it lies in a virtually black spot of the Romanian Light Pollution map. On the other hand, by day it is a pitoresque landscape with tourist attractions like the Detunata cliff and, well, another kind of tourism, the disputed mining area of Rosia Montana.

We were 8-14 people in the camp doing mostly visual observations the main instrument being a 30 cm (12″) newtonian on a dobsonian mount. Among others I myself did almost exclusively astrophotography using a motorized (but unguided) EQ3 mount and an unmodified Canon 1100D enhanced by Magic Lantern and various tele- and wide angle lenses my primary target being the Veil nebula using the Canon EF 200 mm lens at F4 or F4.5.

Here are some of the photos I captured and processed. While the Andromeda and the veil came out quite decent, I am a bit disappointed by the overall quality of the pictures. Maybe I will reprocess the raws some other time.

Cabana Negrilesei – a very cool place to be housed in

At 1200 m sheer power could be a must

The scene: ideal for the telescopes

Hello

hide and seek

Detunata

Detunata

Detunata – stonecandy for a geologist

The Center, spring

Amateur Astronomers, spring

Being hard core :)

on the scene

on the scene

My setup with the 200mm lense

The Center

The Center

Another processing

The Center

The Center

The Cygnus region. The Kepler Space Telescope’s original field of view is almost at the center

M31, uncropped

Veil nebula (about 100×120 sec)

Veil nebula (about 200×120 sec)

I would also like to share the light frames with anyone who wants to give them a try (1.zip, 2.zip, 3.zip, though the pictures are not in any particular order, multiple zips due to filesize limit). I will not maintain these files, the links may die after a while: the zip files are located on my raspberry pi so cut it some slack please :)