This wonderful DSO among quite a few others in it's area of the night sky has been elusive to me since I started imaging in my locale. I've been working with the property owner to have a very dry-rotted pine tree completely removed. It's been since May when I first requested it. I was really worried come August and the eclipse to find that it was still going to be there and most likely forgotten about by the powers that be. I asked again in late august and finally a few months ago it was removed for good. Nothing but a stump remains. Finally peace of mind from falling limbs in the winter storms and the best part.....Completely clear open views all to the East now. YES! I saw that the California Nebula would be a great candidate for a modded DSLR and also in a great spot at the perfect time before the Evil Orb was to rise so it became the objective for the evening.

I finally powered up my mount just before dusk and the last date showed 10/16/17....Seriously?...lol. Man this is going to feel good I thought. I purchased a used 70's Nikkor 180mm ED Gold band lens almost 2 years ago after reading up on this little Jewel and have never really had the chance to use it all that much till now. I saw an opportunity last night finally after all these years. I set up a tandem rig and tried to calibrate but to no avail. I think I figured it out but last night after some frustration I just went for 2 minute exposures unguided and was getting pretty descent results with my Hutech Modded T5i Canon. Just a smidge of trailing at that length so I went for it. I was able to get 22 good lights out of 25 before a very thin layer of clouds rolled in just before 10 p.m. I used those and 50 darks all at ISO 800. No flats needed at all for with this lens even on a crop sensor vignetting is zero with the lens wide open at F2.8

Here's the final results after stacking in DSS using Median and Mosaic methods. A simple basic edit in DSS and then saved as a Tiff and into Abobe camera RAW for a final tweek.

Let me know what you thing of the final results here. Hopefully lots more to come from the far East skies. Hope yours are as clear as well.