Greetings from Spectacle Lake Lodge, near Barry’s Bay. Here I am, up here on my semi-annual astrophotography trip to my favourite dark-sky spot, hauling my Canon Digital Rebel 300D, my Tamron 300mm f/2.8 telephoto lens, my Super-Polaris equatorial mount, and all the gizmos that go with them. I’ve been more known as a hanger-on of film sky-shooting, but this is my first DIGITAL trip.

Last night (May 6, 2007) was spectacular, and very dark, and I went shutterbug crazy, taking 30-sec, 1-minute and 2-minute unguided time exposures of a pile of deep sky objects, especially galaxies, including M101 in Ursa Major:

This is a very closly-zoomed-in excerpt of my image of M101 taken Sunday, May 6, 2007 from the lodge. It is only a two minute exposure, at f/2.8, at ISO 1600. I will be posting images from my trip on my web site and in my HAA Gallery soon.

Stay tuned.

Bob Christmas