Skywatch 2006-01-29 and 2006-02-02 in the Mountains of the Wechsel
(1000m above Sealevel)  Austria

We tried hard to do astrophotography. The weather was cold but excellent and the view to the south was also perfect. Our target was IC2118 the witchhead nebula and IC2177 the seagull nebula.
This place has in the South, West and East absolutely NO lights, no streets etc. Its simply dark. The winter milkyway  is impressive there.

Franz Gruber and i used the Canon 300mm F2.8 telelens on my Canon 10D. The first evening guiding was done manually with an ETX 125 on an EQ-5, the second evening we used the STV plus E-finder on the AP600 of Franz Gruber.

The first evening we had to stop imaging already at 23:00 as the equipment got very much covered with ice and we could not remove the ice on the optics anymore. However, Franz and i at this point had already caught the Witchhead Nebula.
The second evening was again very clear but much more dry. So, no ice on the equipment only the cold was hard (-12 Celsius).
Therefore all planned images were shot and the view to milkyway above us was impressive.