What else can I try for?

I have the following equipment..... Celestron Nexstar 6se, Neximage Camera, filters, 2x barlow, f10 to f6 reducer, t-adapters for both the scope eyepiece and direct to the scope, canon 7, canon 50d, 24-70 mm l series lens, and 100-400 l series lens.

So far some success with orion nebula, the moon, and saturn. A couple of cool star trials and shots of sirius. One shot of Pleaides with the moon too.

Can I get the galaxies? Or Horsehead Nebula?

Just curious what else you would recommend trying with what I have to work with.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Hi Lloyd,

Early spring is pretty barren for the brighter deep space targets in the northern hemisphere, especially in the early evening hours. After Orion moves low in the west, the "galactic window" begins to roll over us. There are thousands of galaxies up there around and to the east of Leo, but most of them will require more than 30 seconds to capture. One exception might be the Leo Trio, galaxies M65, M66 and NGC-3628. Also, pointing your telescope with the focal reducer anywhere in the area of M59-61 or M84-91 will find some galaxies in the field, but you may not capture much in 30 seconds - your dark skies will help, though. Open clusters aren't among my favorite targets, but I've seen some nice photos of them, and several are up there in the early evening now, like M44, M48 and M67.

In the late night and pre-dawn hours now things get better. Not only is Saturn up there posing, but you have numerous bright globular clusters like M3, M5 and M13 coming around. If you aren't too far north, the reflection nebulae M8, M16, M17 and M20 will be visible in the southern sky during the last few hours before dawn. In a few weeks, these objects will be making their appearances earlier in the night.

If you have a PC available when you're imaging and you don't already have planetarium software, I can recommend Cartes du Ciel, which is free to download. It will help you identify targets and plan your sessions, and it can control the NexStar 6SE too, with the right serial cable. I use it to control my Orion Atlas mount.

Don

p.s. - Oh, yes, there's also galaxy M101 up there now, well positioned in the late evening to pre-dawn hours. It's probably the brightest galaxy around until M31 and M33 show up again in the late summer.

Thank you Don.

As you know I am still learning and truly appreciate the help.

Is the Horsehead Nebula one of those numbers? Can I capture that one.

You're welcome, Lloyd.

As far as the Horsehead goes, I suggest trying it (and soon since it's about to get too far west). I can tell you that I couldn't image it where I live with 30 second exposures, because it is quite faint and the light pollution here is pretty severe. I have to use an LP filter for the Horsehead, and that makes longer exposures mandatory. But it seems you have much darker skies where you are, so give it a try.

The globular clusters are great targets in the spring and summer, and they don't require long exposure times. Thirty seconds is enough for the brighter ones, and there are three of those (M3, M5 and M13) rising before 11:00 PM now.

Don

I am over 20 miles from the main city in Maine and there is no town center here with lots of lights either is it is very dark here.

What is the normal time it takes to expose for it? I think I can stretch it a little on bulb.

The shortest exposure I have used for the Horsehead is 5 minutes, but that's with an LP filter, so equal to 2.5 to 3 minutes without a filter. There was still significant sky glow with the filter, so with really dark skies I could ditch the filter and probably capture the same SNR with 1.5 minutes or so.

These are guesses since I have never imaged under really dark skies. My suggestion would be to make a test exposure of 1.5 to 2 minutes just to see how much signal you capture, ignoring the tracking errors. From those results you will have a better idea about the possibilities.