Surprisingly tonight the sky was reasonably clear, so I set up the Vixen Polarie with the Takahashi FS-60CB on top.

The so-called Heart (IC1805) and Soul (IC1848) nebula are two star forming regions in the constellation Cassiopeia, where young bright star ionize the surrounding hydrogen gas, making it glow in the typical deep red color.

Additionally I also took a shorter exposure of the California nebula NGC 1499 – at that time clouds were moving in, creating a haze around the brighter stars. The star in the center of the image is Xi Persei, a very hot, very heavy blue giant, it is one of the intrinsically brightest stars visible to the naked eye, 263.000 times brighter than the sun in absolute terms.

With the Optolong L-enhance filter in place, only the brightest stars are visible through the viewfinder or in live view on the lcd screen, which makes framing the image quite difficult. Using short exposures with very high ISO values (6s, Hi2.0) I managed to find the nebulas, but framing was not perfect. And I definitely need to get the camera rotator, as right now the orientation is quite fixed.