My Notes: This was the very first thing I photographed after getting my iOptron StarGuider Pro star tracker. I went out to a lake to try it out. I had to piece together the equipment in order to make it usable, taking a ball head from a Gorilla Pod and hooking it up to an old Microsoft Surface Pro tablet since I didn’t have a Windows computer at the time. The longest focal length lens I had for my Fuji XT-3 was a 50mm (70mm FF equiv.). You can see how uninspiring that photo was down below. However, I’m glad I took it because it let me make the video also below. I was playing around with zooming in on the photo and realized how much detail was there even in the 50mm photo and how interesting it was to see how tiny this galaxy really is in the night sky. Just as I was finishing the video I thought, I should try to get a close up with the 100-400mm lens that I had since acquired just to finish off the video. So I set up in my back yard and took about an hour worth of photos before my house blocked my view to the galaxy, but the effort was worth it because it adds a nice climax to the video.

Messier Notes: “Nebula without star, very obscure and pretty large, 6’ to 7’ in diameter.”