What should I target?

[Baskevo]

Hey guys!

So as some of you may know, I'm planning to visit a dark site as soon as possible, hopefully in the next few weeks. I'm taking a 2 hour drive down to Anza, CA which I am really excited about. I can't wait, and I want to get the most out of this session. I wanted to get some opinions on what is a good target to go for as my first time shooting in clear skies.

I'm still a beginner, as I've only taken shots of the moon, Andromeda, and I got what I could from the little dumbbell nebula (in light pollution). I am not totally sure of what would be good targets for me and what the harder targets are.

I was thinking I would take another shot at Andromeda starting off, get a few hours of that, and then maybe the heart nebula? California Nebula? Those look really cool... Is that a hard target? I am open to any suggestions!

I'm shooting with an ES ED80 triplet refractor, AVX mount, unmodded Canon DSLR t7i, and my auto guiding system will be coming in the next few days. I am not using any filters or anything.

Thank you!

[JayTee]

Start with M27, spend a couple hours on that. That will then put M45 high enough to start Imaging it. If you can get both of those in one night you've done well.

I chose these objects because they're, well gorgeous and bright, and because they're fairly straightforward to process. Andromeda is difficult to process comparatively speaking.

Cheers,
JT

[Baskevo]

Those look good to me! Thanks, JT!

[Baskevo]

I know that M27 would be pretty small through my scope. Would a target like that be good to use a Barlow for?

[JayTee]

Don't use a Barlow. Because M27 is situated right in the middle of the milky way it gets a really gorgeous starfield as the background. Even though the image will be somewhat small that background starfield makes for a really nice image.

JT

[Baskevo]

Awesome! Sounds really nice I can't wait. Thanks again, JT. Clear skies!