We booked a vacation to the island of St. Lucia in the Eastern Caribbean. I purchased a Pelican case with pick foam and carefully packed my 90mm Aperura OTA, mount, camera, etc. Seeing it roll away on the conveyor at the airport did make me a bit nervous.
It survived the flight and bumpy ride out to the resort thankfully.
St. Lucia has a few mountains, but I lucked out with visibility to the North Star just past the side of a mountain. It was strange to see it so low in the sky at 14 degrees latitude.
I had researched a few possible targets for this location. I wanted to get ones that were not normally visible to me from my home at 43 degrees.
The Cat's Paw was one of those targets. I had 5 nights to shoot. One rained. The night that I shot this galaxy there were only a few occasional clouds.
I was able to get 18 great 300 second exposures that night. You see the processed result here.
P.S. My gear made the trip back home intact and is still in use today.
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