Van Vleck 2

The cabin is a forest service owned building which they rent out for part of the year.   It's pretty basic with a main living area, kitchen, 1 bedroom, and 1 bathroom.   The place runs on propane gas and a spring supplies water.  No electricity.  Our stay was largely uneventful except for a rodent (mice) problem.

One of the challenges of doing remote astrophotography is power.  Laptops, telescope mounts, and dew heaters all need electricity.  Fortunately, the dew was a minimal problem and I only had it show
up one night later into the evening/morning.  In the photo above, you can see our impromptu "recharge station" powered by a 2000 watt generator.   The Hyundai generator ran like a champ all week.   It consumed about 6-7 gallons of gas in total and ran about 35 hours.

Here's our two setups (partially disassembled) during the daytime.

On our 3rd night out, I got a chance to photograph the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) located in Aquarius which is in the eastern-southeastern part of the sky.   This part of the sky doesn't contain many obvious targets for a smaller telescope, but it has many galaxies.  The Helix is about 700 light years away (Wiki) and is a planetary nebula.   Its size is a result of its closeness.  Most planetary nebulae are further away than the Helix.

This shot is a stack of 31 x 5 min shots.   (1600 ASA -- all shots at VV were at 1600).  Flats, darks, bias.
Processed via DSS, Lightroom, and Photoshop.  This is a crop of the approx. 50% of the area of the original.   Couple of nitpicks:   1)  Target is a little small for a 80mm scope.   2) The hints of red circular nebulosity to the lower left of the nebula really speak to the need for doing this target as a composite (like M31) by doing a series of 15-20 minute exposures as well.