Windy Night on the Mountain

The skies were to be clear Saturday Night, so I took the AMOV onto the mountain for some astrophotography. Once I arrived, the skies were, indeed, clear, but the wind was fierce, gusting to well over 30mph at times. I decided that I did not want to waste the trip, so I set up the two AstroTrac mounts, and placed my cameras on the mounts. I decided to use my older Olympus lenses instead of my larger Canon lenses to reduce the profile of the cameras to the wind. Wind buffeting against the cameras would surely introduce motion to the images, so I wanted to reduce the chance of that happening. I guess it did pretty good in some instances, but not in others. As long as I was shooting with the wind hitting the side of the camera, no induced motions was visible in the images. However, when I photographed areas here the wind was hitting the back of the camera, I noticed alot of wind induced blurring in the images. Lesson learned. Here are a couple of the images that I have processed from last night.

In the image above, you can see a wider field image of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). If you look within the disk of the main galaxy, below and right of the bright center, you can see a small satellite galaxy of M31, called M32. Above and left of the bright center, just outside of the main galaxy disk, you can see another satellite galaxy, M110. These galaxies are gravitationally interacting, and are located about 2.5 million light years away from us, and heading in our direction.

Camera - Canon EOS 40D
Lens - Olympus 200 MM f4 Lens, set at f5.6 - ISO 800 - (320MM effective focal length)
63 Minutes of exposure (21 x3 minutes)
AstroTrac TT320 Astrophotography mount for tracking

In this image above, you can see a wide field image of the tail and wing area of the constellation Cygnus. In this image, the bright star in the upper right is Deneb. Above it, and to the left is the North American Nebula (because it resembles the North American continent). Just below that, and slightly fainter is the Pelican Nebula. Directly above the North American Nebula, and at the edge of the image is the open cluster of stars, NGC7039. If you look below and left of Deneb, the next bright star you see is Sadr. You will notice the Sadr Nebula around that star, as well as the upper left of the star.
Now, if you move from Sadr toward the left of the image, you will see another bright star. Just past that star you can see an arch of nebulosity. This is the western part of the Veil Nebula. If you make an imaginary circle completeing that arch, you will see the rest of the Veil Nebula. The eastern portion of the nebula passes through the brighter star below the arch, called 52 Cygni. To the right side of the imaginary circle is an area of the Veil Nebula called the Waterfall.
If you look between the veil nebula and the bottom of the image, you can see another open cluster of stars called NGC 6940.

Camera - Hap Griffin Modified Canon EOS 350D
Lens - Olympus 50 MM f1.8 Lens, set at f2.8 - ISO 800 - (80MM effective focal length)
45 Minutes of exposure (15 x3 minutes)
Imaged using an IDAS LPS Light Pollution Filter
AstroTrac TT320X Astrophotography mount for tracking