Some Widefield Fun!

So a couple of nights ago the skies cleared and I had the chance to get out and observe the skies. Unfortunately it was quite windy so I struggled to get any decent time with my telescope. However my DSLR and Red Snapper tripod wasn't really affected which meant I had the chance to take some nice widefield pictures.

First up for me was a quick single shot of Venus and Mars just before they moved below the viewing horizon. Not that inspiring an image but it was nice to capture both of them together. They will be even closer over the next few days and hopefully I can get another shot when there will also be a crescent moon to join them.

My next shot is a stack of 21 x 8 second exposures of my favourite constellation, Orion. I can only get the main body to fit in my Olympus 50mm lens but it still looks lovely with the nebula nicely showing up along with some lovely colour in the stars.

After this I moved onto the area of comet Lovejoy C2014 Q2 which was in part of the sky where I could take a picture of it with the Double Cluster or Andromeda. In the end I decided to image it with both of these famous deep space objects, the Double Cluster with 12 x 8 second exposures and Andromeda with 11 x 8 second exposures.

Finally, as I was packing up my friend mentioned the fuzzy patch in the sky near Jupiter and I realised that this was the Beehive Cluster. Never shy to grab an opportunity I took 11 x 8 second exposures of this target although the very bright Jupiter does overwhelm the image a little.