With so much asteroid astrometry being done by automated programs I've been spending more time recently _trying_ to take "pretty pictures". It's a real chore. Getting the light images is almost the easiest part. Then there's making the darks and the flats and then median combining them and using those to reduce the lights. I'm just glad at least part of the process is automated. I'm still not 100% happy with my work but the following are the first I like enough to share. It's somewhat frustrating that the star images in each of the individual 30 second exposures are smaller than in the end result but I find they also grow if one shoots one long exposure rather than the several short ones these shots are made from. I think there's something called masking that may make the stars smaller but I have not gotten there yet. Both pictures are made up from 20 unguided thirty second light exposures which were reduced with 20 thirty second darks and 20 8.5 second flats. All work done with CCDSoft, Graphic Converter and, of course, PhotoShop (the latter to adjust the contrast a bit and to shrink the images to a manageable size for sharing via the web). Images shot through a C-14 operating at f/5.2 using an SBIG ST-10XME. If all of that is Greek to you it's because you're too smart to get into this craziness. :) Spiral galaxy NGC 7331 (and many smaller friends): http://www.trilobyte.net/paw/slas/patrickw/PATRICKW1011.JPG Bubble Nebula (Caldwell 11): http://www.trilobyte.net/paw/slas/patrickw/PATRICKW1012.JPG Both pictures were made tonight. Doing stuff like this makes me appreciate many of the images I see on the UA gallery which entail much longer exposures and a whole lot more work. pw