2013 didn't quite live up to expectations for deep sky objects, due to a combination of weather and the need for darker skies for the fainter nebulous objects, such as the Gum catalogue, that I had in mind.

Stephen Boyd had kindly allowed me to continue to borrow the 8" f/4 Newtonian that I’d had since April 2012, so the pressure was off to select a new OTA and spend my AP budget there. However, fellow AP friend Jean-Marie Locci was finishing his work assignment in Australia and moving to Moscow in May. I finally addressed the "next OTA" question mid-February by buying his 8" PowerNewt and selling him back the 80mm Apogee APO I bought from him originally in 2010. He missed it and I will now too. It was a portable and very capable starting place for Astrophotography!

I had ended 2013 by deciding to purchase a Canon 70D DSLR and have it modified for deep-sky Astrophotography, a Baader BCF filter replacement of the standard Canon imaging chip's filter. Mastering this with the PowerNewt was the initial task for the year.

Aims for this year were similar to 2013, but with the hope that the new camera and OTA, plus some more predictable weather, might give more dark sky opportunities to get some better Gum catalogue images and wide field milky way shots. New Moon weekends during winter were however very poor and I ended up with only one field trip for the year, but a good one, to the Kennedy Range and Mt Augusts National Parks for about a week in September.

An area that also intrigued me was to try some mosaics and some HDR images. This was to challenge me to improve my Photoshop skills and possibly even have a look at PixInsight that is gaining more traction for the common Astrophotography software kit bag. I failed to achieve this however :(

My continued involvement with Perth Observatory's Volunteer Group (POVG) also expanded into experimentation with their public viewing telescopes to determine for myself their longer focal length planetary capability, but more significantly the potential for expanding POVG activities into basic Astrophotography if suitable methods can be found. In the end, the very continuance of Perth Observatory was at risk at end of 2014 and 2015 will be a year for POVG to see if they can step up and run its public outreach.

Unless stated otherwise, images are from my home location in Willetton, 12 Km south of the centre of Perth, Western Australia.

My favourites shots can also be found on AstroBin http://www.astrobin.com/users/scottastrophe