Camping in Eastern Colorado: Helix and Northern Trifid

We needed a quick getaway, and decided it would be a good time to do some astrophotography from the road. Our original plan was to try North Sterling State Park, but Good To Stargaze predicted bad skies for most of the night. The Denver Astronomical Society’s dark sky site was showing a good forecast, so we went there instead.

Things went well at first, but then clouds rolled in from the west and covered the southern part of the sky. That was too bad, because I was trying to get the Helix Nebula, which is at −21° declination, putting it in the southern sky. I lost 187 of my 231 subs due to clouds. Here is what I was able to salvage.

The dark sky site doesn’t allow camping, so I found a safe spot for my scope and left it running its program for the night. We camped at Ahimsa Coffee Shop in Limon, which meant we had a good breakfast this morning. It’s a really great place, and I’m picky about coffee.

After breakfast, we picked up the scope and saw that it had better luck with the Northern Trifid Nebula. Here is the result.

The Dwarf’s atlas suggested the “astro” filter for this, but I wonder if the “duo” filter would have been better? I’m still very new at this.