So to continue with highlights from our #astrophotography expedition to Gingin, another subject I had some fun with was Sandqvist 149.

Yes, I'm aware of its other, more popular name but let's let the discoverer have some kudos, huh?

This is a dark nebula, a star-blotting-out mass of dust that looks like a crack in the sky. You can see some stars in front of it which gives me a sense of three dimensionality to the usual flatness that I get of looking into the infinity of the night sky, and gives perhaps the sense that it is a dust cloud there, not a crack in reality.

The image on the left I took with the #dwarfiii - 60 second exposure, with a gain of 80, and stacked 40 of them.

That's coming to us straight out of camera, and I'll do some post to it sometime.

The image on the right was taken with the #DwarfII with shutter 15 and gain 80, for about 330 frames - and is the first time I've used a stellation mask.

I think that they look a bit silly - because stars don't look like that and it's a really artificial sort of prettiness that's a bit kitsch to me. Sorry to everyone who uses them - I mean they can look pretty, I admit...but for me they're usually meh.

I thought it would be funny to use one for a dark object.

#Astrodon #AstroPhotograhy #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DarkNebula #Sandquist149