As much as wanted to shoot a photogenic winter nebula, the moon phase made it impossible. So, here we have an off the beaten path object.br/br/The bright star on the right is Merak which is in the Big Dipper. The cigar shaped thingy close to the image center is M108, a galaxy. The green ball below image center is planetary nebula M97, the Owl nebula. Merak is a star in our galaxy, and it's about 80 light years from earth. The Owl nebula is also in our galaxy but much farther away, ~2600 ly. The galaxy M108 is even farther away, ~45 million ly. Many more fainter galaxies are in this picture.br/br/As always, the image diagonal covers the same amount of sky as 10 full moon diameters.br/br/Technical details: Baader modded Canon XSi, Canon 200 mm f2.8L @ f3.2 (external aperture), 32x4min (dithered manually), 40+ darks, 40+ flats. Merak is totally overexposed, a DDP stretch should do a better job.br/br/Other notes: I think I once again confused my growling stomach for an animal. I added a new sound to my 'strange sounds up on the mountain' collection. It sounded like a shotgun being fired, but slowed down by ~100x. I think it was a big tree branch falling over or maybe a tree.