This is a subject that I was never able to shoot from my country, because it is too low and inside a deep light pollution.
5 years ago I went to South Africa for a trip, but at that time I didn't have a tracker, so I couldn't take a nice shot of this area. Now, after 5 years, we went back in South Africa and luckly with a tracker. I arrived in SA on July 28th but it wasn't possible to take deep photos until August 6th, due to the full Moon and the weather. The days were passing fast and I was starting to get nervous without deep photos. Finally the right night showed up. I installed everything the best I could, and gave the long-awaited task to my 85mm f/1.8 lens and Canon 80D. Choosing the 80D was a dangerous choice, because I had never tested it before for deep photos! I also had the trusty 6D with me, but I took the risk and went with the 80D because it gave me a field of view that I preferred.
So I configured everything, but immediately the first problem: I lost more than an hour doing the polar alignment with the Octans, I had never done it and it was very (very!) difficult for me. The time passed fast and my nervous was rising. Then the second problem, once the polar alignment was done, the stars were super blurry! I didn't understand why, I checked the alignment many times, then I understood: the Star Adventurer had to be set for the Southern hemisphere! A silly mistake but I wasted more time. So, once that was resolved, I started shooting. After 10 minutes I saw that everything in the preview had become blurred: the location was spectacular, 21.73 sqm on a hill 150 meters high and 700 meters far from the sea, so to South direction everything was free, zero light pollution! But the problem was the humidity, in fact a cloud of humidity coming from the sea passed and all the equipment became wet, it was dripping water as if it were raining! I had to dismantle everything and bring the lens into the house, drying it with a hairdryer because the water went inside too! Luckily nothing bad, in a few minutes everything was dry again, but I had to start from scratch with the polar alignment and so on.
So almost 3 hours wasted, but in the end everything became finally perfect like a magic, and I managed to bring home this image: my first Rho Ophiuchi!
In the same night I decided to shoot also other subjects, so I didn't take so many frames of this - because I could not foresee how many good night there were out in the next days, so I wanted some different photos. In the beginning I was thinking there was a gradient on the right, but I realized it's the Milky Way, amazing what a dark sky can give you!
Thanks for reading!