Stairway to the heavens

The main reason for going to Morrocco this time around, was to do astronomy from a dark site on the edge of the Saharan desert. The site was not as good as the astrofarm in Namibia, but WAY better than anything I have experienced in Norway. So dark you could see the zodiacal lights. Can't remember ever seeing that in Norway.

Most nights have, luckily, been clear. And I have spent most of them sitting, standing, walking on the rooftop terrasse where all the telescopes are located. Many sleepless nights hopefully resulting in many brilliant images of the beautiful objects in the skies. For those of you who have never seen my astro images, they can be found in my astrophoto blog at http://heavensglory.blogspot.com. As I finish processing the images I have taken here, I will add them to that blog.
Every evening/night, I walk the stairs up to the terrasse. Only to be met by the glorious skies above. During the day, it is just a rooftop terrasse, but at night, it is a stairway to the heavens.

The following is the normal routine for taking astrophotos :

First set up everything

Then find your object

Check the focus

Set up the autoguider

Start the camera, and wait

...and wait...

...and wait...

And then stop.

A final procedure is to take something called flats. A procedure to let the camera record the variations in light over the sensor. This can be caused by specks on the sensor or vignetting by the optics.

Afterwards, the processing may take from hours to days. But the result is, hopefully, rewarding. The following is the result of a basic processing of an image of the galaxy M51 in Canes Venatici. 3.5 hours of exposure. The filed also contains several other, smaller galaxies in the field.