I just spent about a week in Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas (any further southwest and you're in Mexico). In addition to the amazing terrain and all the wild organisms in the desert, I was able to get my astro gear more or less working for a couple of nights. It's so dark down there that the Milky Way is the same at the horizon as it is at the zenith. The Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae are pretty much naked-eye objects. The Little Dipper was hard to make out because there were SO MANY STARS! Once dark-adapted, I could easily make my way about the campground by starlight Holy cow. Did I mention that it was dark?

Our helpful campground host:


Lagoon and Trifid, 29x180" @ ISO 800 through the Stellarvue. I may have gotten a little carried away with contrast on this one -- what do you think?


When the Trifid set and the Veil clouded over, I got a few frames of M42. By then the telescope had fallen out of the mount onto the ground (!!) and bashed the guide camera. Thought it had broken, but it was just that it had been knocked way out of focus. So I couldn't autoguide, and was limited to 120". Just 4 frames that would stack, at ISO 800:

Very nice results. Your telescope falling out of its mount must have elevated your heart rate! I hope your host let you have some water. He looks a little possessive about that.

OMG! That is crazy! Very nice pictures, bravo!

Thank you. You know, by that point so many things had gone wrong that evening that I was pretty much out of emotional batteries. I spent an hour -- an HOUR -- trying to get M8 and M20 centered. I had them in view, went to center, and lost them out of the frame. It was like a bad dream, it can't POSSIBLY be this bad, I can't possibly be this incompetent, can I? Could have had another hour of data on them. Finally my partner gently pointed out that Saturn was right there, and I realized that I could see the Trifid and Lagoon too and just bloody sighted along the bolts in the mounting rings. Presto!

As for the water shortage, well, the vultures were just guarding the non-potable water spigots. There was one source of potable water for the whole campground, and they set THIS guy to guard that one:


Personally I think he was in league with the vultures. "Kill them with dehydration, and we'll let you have all the nice dirty water you want."