Imaging the Milky Way

If you missed it, I posted how I have gotten into astrophotography lately ever since I got a smart telescope earlier this year.

One of the things that I've always wanted to image is our Milky Way galaxy. Unfortunately, living in the suburbs of Chicago and with the light pollution (Bortle 9), it was almost impossible. I've been waiting for an opportunity to go elsewhere and attempt this. Well, that opportunity came last week when I got to spend a couple of week out in Hawaii (Kauai and Oahu, which BTW have been constantly on my mind the past couple of days due to Hurricane Lala). I brought the telescope with me with the intention of trying to see if I can do something. Didn't get clearly skies in Kauai, and didn't have clear skies in Oahu either until 3 days before we left.

On the beaches of Ko Olina in Oahu, we managed to finally capture the image of the center of the Milky Way using our Dwarf Mini telescope:

It turned out better than I expected. It took about half an hour of stacking to get this image. I wish we had more time to be able to do a mosaic because I wanted to try an image above and below the enter, but the clouds were already moving in. Still, we were pleased that we managed to accomplish our main goal.

And yes, you can bet that I'll be showing this in my astronomy class this Fall! 😊

Zz.