[Mickoid (Michael)]

I took these a few weeks back with the same lens I used with film over 25 years ago. I went back to the same location too, in rural Victoria, to use it under the same dark skies. It's a Pentax Takumar 300mm f4 prime lens but digital sensors really brought out the flaws of this old lens that film had disguised. It has chronic CA and coma wide open. These were shot at f8 to reduce the aberrations and although better at f8, f11 would have improved it further. At f8, IC2118 was captured using a modded Canon 550d with 3min unguided subs at 3200iso on a Heq5pro mount. I shot about 40 subs but heavy dew had settled on the lens for half of them so I only used 21. That's just over 60 mins on this dim sucker. The blue glow is from the stars Rigel to the right and Cursa from below.

M45 was shot earlier in the night at a lower altitude, so the lens dew shield was able to do its job. Same set up was used but at 1600iso and only 11 x 3min unguided subs were shot.