We have had several opportunities in March for good-to-excellent night sky viewing and astrophotography sessions. High on my list was capturing NGC 1499 (“California Nebula”). It resides in the western sky during March and is located near Pleiades but is actually in the constellation Perseus.

One drawback to observing it in the spring is that there can be interference from zodiacal light. From Wikipedia,
The zodiacal light is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. It appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun’s direction in a roughly triangular shape along the zodiac…
…Since zodiacal light is very faint, it is often outshone and rendered invisible by moonlight or light pollution.
I made several attempts at NGC 1499. The first attempt was about as expected as I didn’t actually know where to point the camera so I used a short telephoto focal length (80mm) with a wide field of view (25.3° x 17.0°). Luckily, I pointed it correctly but unluckily I bumped the focus ring and everything had a soft focus. Okay, not a success but not too bad for a first attempt.


On my second attempt I used a longer focal length (180mm) which meant a smaller field of view (11.4° x 13.7°). I had very good focus and other camera settings but managed to actually point it at the wrong object. Instead, I photographed NGC 1579 (“Northern Trifid Nebula”). Oops! But the result was still a success–even if not the object I was seeking.
The third try worked out well. I reverted back to a shorter focal length (85mm) and wider field of view (23.9° x 16.0°) because that might give me a pleasing image with the nebula and neighboring stars. This worked out well except for the previously mentioned zodiacal light. The light was present in the field of view so it was necessary to crop the image to remove the bright band.
I actually prefer the first image as it has better color and less lens flare than the second image.
Finally, I shot images of the zodiacal light using an ultra-wide fisheye lens to capture both the foreground of Upper Lake Mary and the stars and planets up through the zenith. NGC 1499 and NGC 1579 are located to the right of Pleiades but are too small to be visible in this wide view.

I have recently started using Siril for my astrophotography processing and have been generally pleased with the results.