This is the commonly image quot;Butterfly nebulaquot; (aka IC1318) in Cygnus. Sadr is just outside the field of view on the right hand side. In the upper right hand side you can see open cluster NGC 6910.

This image is a departure from my darker dark nebula images. In reality, this was more of a dress rehearsal for another image. The goal of this session was to figure out if imaging an H-alpha rich region with just a luminance filter would result in a decent image. I think it did, but clearly it is not as jawdropping as a narrowband version of the same area.

Technical details:
Date: Aug 8, 2015
Time: 9:30 pm - 2:00 am
Camera: SBIG STF-8300M
CCD Temperature: -10 C
Optics: Televue 127is (native)
Filter: Astronomik L
Light frames: 27x8 min
Dark frames: 50
Flat frames: 25
Flat darks: 25
Binning: 1x1
Guiding: Orion SSAG @ Orion finder (~162 mm)
Mount: AP Mach 1
Dithering: Manual
Processing: Stacking and gentle deconvolution in CCDStack, Curves and Levels in PSCS6.

Other notes:
I ended up losing two frames to some noise in the RA axis of the mount. I am convinced that there is debris in the gears, and I'll probably use the next full moon to investigate.

The mount took and pretty good beating before midnight as it was pretty windy. Three years ago I had a similar experience (strong winds on a summer night before midnight) and I packed up only to find that the winds had died down by the time I left. So this time I just stuck it out. The mount certainly didn't give a crap about the wind so there was no need to pack up anyway. But after midnight the wind did calm down, and the rest of the night was far more pleasant.

On my way up the mountain I saw a couple of tarantulas crossing the road. As I was packing up for the night, I noticed that a baby scorpion had crawled up my body to my hand.