Orion Nebula pics. First attempt.

breakstuff

After spending a few attempts at getting my tracking mount working, I hooked up my camera and pointed it at the Orion Nebula. Took around forty thirty second exposures and stacked them in Deep Sky Stacker along with ten dark frames and ten bias frames. Some quick, (and very amateurish) post processing in Gimp, and here's the results.

 

I'm pretty damn pleased with it for a first attempt. 

Also for anyone who's interested, here's a pic of my set up. 

 

stickyfiddle

Nice! I really like the idea of getting more into astro as we have the desert on our doorstep and it's the perfect place to go do it on a clear night. 

I tried a few ad hoc shots of the milky way last time I was up in the mountains in Oman but nowhere near the quality youve got there.

breakstuff

Thanks Sticky. I'm mega jealous of your location. My back garden is bortle 5/6 so kind of tricky. Also the neighbour leaves two powerful spotlights on constantly which doesn't help. Would love a nice dark location like yours.

And that's a great shot by the way. 

Axe_meister

I'm slowly going down this rabbit hole as well. At 1 hour of clear sky's and managed to stack 80 6s shots. With a Canon 24-104 (at 24mm x1.6 crop). After stacking I just managed to see a smudge of a nebula in Orion. Could not see a thing through the viewfinder or live view so eyeballed the focus on a star I could see and just pointed it roughly in the direction of Orion. Next purchase is a phone mount for the camera hot shoe. So I can use the star tracker app to help me navigate.
Have a shopping list of trackers/mounts telescopes.
I'm going down the lightweight portable route as large equatorial mounts are too heavy for carrying up a hill on Dartmoor

breakstuff

You need to do some post processing with the stacked image to draw the data out @Axe_meister. My stacked image showed virtually nothing other than stars. You need to 'stretch' the image in Photoshop, Gimp or such like. There's loads of tutorials on YouTube to help you along. It's trial and error and I'm only just finding my feet with it. I probably spend more time processing than actually taking the shots, however once you have your stacked image you can have as many attempts as you want processing it.

Axe_meister

Yep did lots of stretching after stacking and did all the flats/darks/bias.

breakstuff

Axe_meister said:

Yep did lots of stretching after stacking and did all the flats/darks/bias.

Ah, sorry mate, hope I didn't come across as patronising you. 

Once you get a tracking mount you should see a huge improvement. I can highly recommend the Skywatcher Az Gti. Great Goto ability and the tracking, at least on mine, is bang on.

Axe_meister

breakstuff said:

Axe_meister said:

Yep did lots of stretching after stacking and did all the flats/darks/bias.

Ah, sorry mate, hope I didn't come across as patronising you. 

Once you get a tracking mount you should see a huge improvement. I can highly recommend the Skywatcher Az Gti. Great Goto ability and the tracking, at least on mine, is bang on.

How easy it is to do polar alignment?
Current short list for scopes are Williams optics 61 or Redcat 51

RandallFlagg

The content of this thread is like dipping a toe into a pool of the unknown for me but I love the results and find the gear and knowledge you guys have intriguing. I would love to see the stars from a place of low light pollution.

stickyfiddle

breakstuff said:

Thanks Sticky. I'm mega jealous of your location. My back garden is bortle 5/6 so kind of tricky. Also the neighbour leaves two powerful spotlights on constantly which doesn't help. Would love a nice dark location like yours.

And that's a great shot by the way. 

Yeah, this was just a single long exposure with my old XT1 gorillapod-ed to a fence using the kit lens iirc. Right on the edge of what you can do before you get star trails. 

Im perfectly happy with it with that kit and effort level, but I’d love to see what I could do with at least a few shots stacked and horizon adjusted etc. But I just know I’d end up with a bloody tracking system and a new obsession. Maybe that wouldn’t be the end of the world, as we’ve been taking about a new car to let us get out there more easily and more often. Would be a good escape from corporate work shite!

strumjoughlamps

My Sister is well into her astronomy,  Her telescope can plug into computer and be controlled from that including taking pics/vids. It's soooooo cheating

breakstuff

Axe_meister said:

breakstuff said:

Axe_meister said:

Yep did lots of stretching after stacking and did all the flats/darks/bias.

Ah, sorry mate, hope I didn't come across as patronising you. 

Once you get a tracking mount you should see a huge improvement. I can highly recommend the Skywatcher Az Gti. Great Goto ability and the tracking, at least on mine, is bang on.

How easy it is to do polar alignment?
Current short list for scopes are Williams optics 61 or Redcat 51

You don't have to polar align the AzGti unless you use it in Eq mode, which I don't. I use the brightest star alignment where you align two stars of your choice and the mount does the rest. It's really easy very pretty accurate so long as you keep everything centred in the viewfinder.

This video explains things much better than I could. 

Axe_meister

The only thing that worries me is the payload. From what I have read you should divide payload capacity by 2 for photography. So in this case 2.5kg.
So SLR (Canon 50D) + L-Bracket+Small scope+Image Flattener+Barlow lens + Anti dew heating element.
Would that not get close to the max capacity.

breakstuff

My set up comes in at around 3kg and it's absolutely fine.My scope alone weighs just under 2kg and then there's my camera, field flattener and finder scope, which is a lump in itself. I have discovered that it has to be well balanced though, if not it doesn't track as well and you get slight star trailing. You can do without a Barlow lens if you're using a flattener too. I've not had any issues with dew so far so haven't use a heating element yet. Time will tell if I will need to. 

Axe_meister

Time to give my credit card another hammering 

breakstuff

Axe_meister said:

Time to give my credit card another hammering 

Mine's only just recovered. And I thought guitar GAS was bad.

Axe_meister

I'm surprised nobody makes a cheap motorised barn door tracker.

Jalapeno

Ruddy marvellous, keep them coming !

breakstuff

Ok, here's the next one. Had a go at M51 Spiral Galaxy last night. My tracking was a bit off so the stars are misshapen, but I'm reasonably pleased with the pic for a first attempt. There's only around twenty minutes of data, whereas I could do with a couple of hours but it was getting cold and late and I'd already wasted an hour and a half trying to sort the tracking. Anyway, here's the pic ( you may need to zoom in a bit)

 
Had another go on Orion the week before, which turned out a lot better.

 

WiresDreamDisasters

Very nice @breakstuff ;

breakstuff

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Very nice @breakstuff ;

Thanks Drew.