I took this image from my very first star party, an event that i've been looking forward to for more than 6 months. I've been religiously checking the weather prior to the trip, and as luck would have it we had an absolutely mint sky with only the half moon getting in the way for the first quarter of the night.
The skies are categorized as Bortle 2/3 in this location on the coast of Lake Huron. I decided to go for something that i simply can't properly image from my suburban location - a dust field alongside a reflection nebula. While the Askar and the 533 were a perfect fit in terms of the field of view, the framing wasn't perfect and unfortunately there wasn't a way for me to see it until i fully stacked the image. Another issue was dew - while i do have heater bands for the scope, i don't have something similar for the guide scope. Latter half of the night saw the guide scope completely fogged up, resulting in erratic guiding and a loss of over 3 hrs of subs.
Nonetheless, the trip was a complete success. I got to see the Milky Way with my bare eyes, participated in a ton of visual observing, and of course managed to snag a nice little image in the end as well
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