I spent a few nights at the Cosmic Campground during October 2016. The Cosmic Campgrouns is a dark sky refuge NFS campground in the western Gila Mountains in western New Mexico.  It's dark. While there, I imaged the Sculptor Galaxy along with a nearby globular cluster, NGC 288.  The galaxy is about 11.5 million light years distant; NGC 288 is a mere 29,000 ly.

This is a ‘hybrid’ image (DSLR and CCD).  I took luminance data thru a 115 mm Stellarview refractor using a recently-acquired Atik 460 mono and combined it with color data using my Canon T2i and an Orion ED80 (with a focal reducer).  3.5’ subs at ISO 1600 for the color shots; 10’ subs @ -10 for the luminance subs. These scopes were mounted side-by-side on my Losmandy G11.

Guiding was through an on-axis guider using a Lodestar II camera and PhD2 software.

The field of view used to acquire the image is shown on the right. Clicking the image above will open up a larger version of image.

Enchanted Skies - Astrophotography by Rich Richins (all images copyright, Rich Richins)