I finally had clear weather after receiving the SBIG ST-8300M CCD camera. My target was the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, because it's bright and in a good location this time of year.

M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy

Coming from a Canon DSLR background, I was afraid of what I'd get into with mono CCD imaging. This means that in order to get a full-color image, you have to take pictures in Red, Green and Blue, and then combine them together. It sounds like a lot of work, and it is. But the results are better than what you'd get with a one-shot color (OSC) camera like a DSLR.

In this image, I framed the galaxy with a little magnitude 7 star to the left. But what I really like about this image is the cluster of far-off galaxies below and to the left of the bright star. Thus, we have three layers of depth - foreground stars all in our own Milky Way galaxy, then M51 (a nearby galaxy), and finally very far off galaxies that would otherwise go unnoticed.