Photo of the Week for February 13, 2015

Every once in a while you see a picture that forcefully reminds you that the world of astrophotography has turned a corner. This image of the California Nebula (also known as NGC1499) in Perseus by Maxime Poirier is one such image. Her photo was captured from Montcerf-Lytton, Quebec (approximately 300 km northwest of Montreal) and combines 14, eight-minute exposures at ISO 1600, captured with a commercially modified Canon EOS Rebel T3i DSLR camera attached to a Astro-Tech 65 mm f/6.5 apochromatic refractor telescope.

It wasn’t that long ago that a photo of this quality would have needed a largish telescope, a lengthy session of painstaking manual guiding, and a homebuilt camera that may have even required a ready supply of dry ice! And if you succeeded, you would probably be the only person in your club to have done so. Times have changed.