The Green Owl

We had a pretty display of stars from the city the other day; a clear, transparent night seemed to be underway so I got my 8" SCT out and drove up to the middle of a dark heath with a view over the sea. Fantastic! The light from the north came more from the milky way looming in the background, stationary above the sea. There was an aurora-esque shaft of light shooting out at right angles across the constellation Cepheus. A few dark clouds were actually sillhouetted against the milky way background. Ursa Major was approaching over head and I pointed the scope to it, attached my camera, focused, but the strong, cold wind was blowing the stars into little fuzzy flower shapes. I removed the dew shield, knowing that the wind would look after any condensation and set to work with a few 1 minute long snaps of the Owl Nebula, M97. Half way thorough, I ended up changing the 9V battery for my motor, and trying to repair a broken wire that has broken under field conditions like that was not nice. I spent ages trying to get Deep Sky Stacker to recognise my fuzzy stars but it was useless - I forced it to stack 16 in the end (which I had individually modified) and then it gave me stupidly blue pictures. I spent an equal age trying to work with Registax and I processed in Paint Shop Pro. The pic here is the 16 x 1 min Deep Sky Stack, ISO 1600. Apologies for the slightly yellow stars. You can see the Owl's eyes and central star. The Owl nebula, M97 is a 3' wide, 12th magnitude planetary nebula near the tip of The Plough.