First dark sky observing

[nmoushon]

While I was in Virginia over the holidays I was able to get away from family for a couple hours and drive deep into the Appellation Mountains into truly dark skies for the first time that I can remember. It was truly amazing! There was so many more stars than I normally see that I was completely lost as to what part of the sky I was looking at. lol Anyways I only had about an hour to actually take pictures because I had to drive over an hour to get to the dark skies. I couldn't decide on one target to focus on so I decided to split my time between a couple targets. Which are as follows:

Andromeda Galaxy: ISO 1600, 25 x 4 sec subs + darks

Polaris(which includes NGC 188): ISO 800, 15 x 90sec subs + darks

Orion Nebula: ISO 1600, 70 x 3.2sec subs + darks

Widefield Milky Way: ISO 800, 12 x 30sec subs + darks

Crescent Moon and Venus over the silhouette of the Smithsonian Castle in Washington DC: Single shot from a point and shot. Forgot my slr.

[1crash70]

These are great.

Thanks for posting them.