Imaging Near Upham

This Christmas holiday, we visited our parents in Las Cruces as we usually do.  In order to test some of our new equipment, we drove out into the desert near Upham, NM,  north of Las Cruces.   We were headed for the dark sky site that the local club uses but had to stop short due to the road conditions. We did some basic imaging tests ... at least until the equipment frosted over.  We also got a visit from the local US Border Patrol agents wondering what we were doing.

We were able to get this image of the Orion Nebula before shutting down.  This was taken with a QSI-540 CCD through an Orion ED80T-CF 80mm refractor.

We also tested some images using a Canon 450D riding piggy-back on the mount.  Here is one of the belt of Orion

This is the star field around the PacMan nebula