Comet and stuff

Horray! First clear night for ages, decided to go for Comet Lovejoy. After a bit of searching with binoculars I found it  near Pleiades star cluster. Chilly - 25C here in Finland, thankfully there was a fireplace near by so I could go warm up between the shots.
Alignment turned out great aswell, although I am a total novice in it because I dont have my own tracking mount. My friend came with me and he has Astrotrac. By pure luck I managed to get it aligned fairly well. 6 minutes without trailing at 50mm, so I stacked 8 of them to gather more light.

On the left side of the comet, you can see Pleiades star cluster, in the middle the is extremely faint reflection nebula complex, called Perseus molecular cloud. The red emission nebula above it is California nebula.

8x6min | f/2.0 | ISO 200 with Canon 6D and Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2

I see red

Hydrogen is most abundant material in the universe, astrophotographers often see red nebulas in their images. Expecially emission nebulas are often red or magenta. The color is caused by Hydrogen-alpha: a specific deep-red spectral line of 656.28 nm.
Constellation of Cyqnus has alot material to photograph. Large and bright emission nebulas like North-America nebula are easy targets even for unmodified cameras. You can get a good looking image with just 30 second exposure time, however the more you gather light the better your images turn out. The California nebula in the constellation of Perseus is also worth a try.

The California nebula glows red because of hydrogen and a really hot star near by called Menkib. It has gotten its name from it shape that resembles the state of California.

The California nebula