This area of the Milky Way galaxy is part of the Dark Rift with the Pipestem Dark Nebula on the right. This is my one year mark at Astrophotography and before that I was clueless as to what the Pipestem Nebula even was. I had to squint and roll with it as far as being a "pipe " ....but not anymore. If one thinks of the old English and European clay pipes from the late1500's to1700's, the Pipestem Nebula jumps right into recognition. Complete with "smoke" wafting from the bowl. Yep...really.

Most of my attempts at astro-imaging is single exposure, no tracking device or stacking of multiple exposures. So that limits the image capture to 30 seconds or less and better 20 seconds to avoid star trails. But this time I wanted to try a much longer exposure with the star tracker MSM, which is a great piece of kit for not much cash outlay. Well worth it! Now I'm waiting for a 24mm f/1.4 prime lens to get much better detail and stitch together panoramas and stack multiples. Slowly upping the game. Small steps...

Canon EOS Rebel T3i, Canon kit lens 18-55mm @36mm, Move Shoot Move Star Tracker, Manfrotto tripod, intervalometer timer.

Single exposure image @ 241 seconds exposure @ f/4.5, ISO 1600.

Color and contrast enhancements.