Pillars of Creation — Loran Hughes Astrophotography

It's beginning to look like smoke season is coming to an end. We're not getting more good air than not, although most days we can see haze in the distance.

So on the last evening of August 2018, I was able to get back to observing. I now have a 12nm Hydrogen Alpha filter, so I set my sights on the Eagle Nebula. Unfortunately, I began having issues with guiding again. PHD2 worked flawlessly when I first installed it, but it just hasn't worked properly after I tried to make a few tweaks. I've now uninstalled and reinstalled the program to get it back to its defaults and I'll work on it next weekend.

Since guiding was out of the question, I dialed down my exposures to 20 seconds. As luck would have it, I was almost dead-center on the Pillars of Creation.

Pillars of Creation. Hydrogen Alpha and RGB data combined. Celestron C6 with ZWO ASI178mc-Cooled camera.

This is the best nebula photo I've ever taken. Honestly, it took a lot of post-processing to combine the Ha and RGB images, but I'm pretty happy with it.

The nights are getting cooler and I figure I've got a good six weeks before the winter rains set. With the smoke clearing, I'm finally able to get off the bench.