Wednesday evening I was experimenting with a new piece of gear on the big telescope. I set my other imaging equipment, more or less, on auto. It was the peak of the Draconid Meteor shower. This event is not known for lots of meteors, maybe 5-10 per hour, however, they’re long and bright, great for photography. With the camera set and pointed in the correct direction, I moved over to the Seestar S30 scope and pointed it at a rather dull spot in the sky, an open cluster (don’t ya love that contradiction?) known as M 39. I went about my business and an hour and a half later, since there were no animals to talk with, I shut things down. Today I got around to looking at the results—zowwie! The camera recorded a great star trail with zero meteors—but look at that color in those stars. I’ll take it. Stack of 207 images put together in StarStax software. Nikon D850, Nikkor 28-300 lens.
And M 39 was anything but dull. Granted, its cluster of stars is not compelling, but consider the competition. This is a stack of about 400 images, or 66 minutes of exposures, put together in Seestar S30.
