My First Nebula

[astrowoody (Steve)]

This was one of the first times I managed to align my scope with any success. however after a few hours my scope had drifted and while searching for Betelgeuse and I found this, the Orion Nebula. It’s taken with a Nikon D5500 at 30 sec on ISO of 26500. I had trouble focusing the image as I couldn’t see the image in the foldout touch screen. I think that may be due to the brightness setting of the screen. My scope is a Meade LX90 2032mm f/10.
Here are some of the other photos taken on the night.
http://woodysplace.info/gallaries/li...den-01-19.html

[raymo]

Steve, This image should be in the beginners' section where you can get advice/help with correcting the basic faults with this image, and the ones in your link. M42 won't show up on your LCD screen, it's not bright enough.
The beginners' section is also good because you will see images and
comments from other people at about the same stage of their AP journey
as you, and comments/ help from more experienced imagers, which should get you progressing nicely.
raymo

[Ukastronomer (Jeremy)]

well done

[Peter Ward]

It's always exciting testing the deep sky waters for the first time.....but not a great M42 at this stage.

Things you might want to work on:
1) focus....stars should be a s small and tight as your optics will deliver...settling for anything else is never a good look.
2) tracking. Stars are round (spherical really) Any other shape shows something is amiss in tracking and or guiding. Take care to polar align accurately
3) Guiding. Just an extension of tracking, accurate guiding will deliver even tighter stars.
4) Noise. More exposure time, extended stacking, cooled cameras etc. all help reduce the grainy look of underexposed images.
5) Dynamic range. The core of M42 is remarkably bright, and will burn out long before the extended nebulosity is revealed. The trick is to layer several exposures (short for the trapesium, longer for the rest)

Stick with it

[multiweb (Marc)]

Way better than my first attempt. As Peter said keep at it. Plenty of good tips in his post. Only upwards from here on.

[Omega62 (Andrew)]

Nice.
I was very excited about my very first Astro image.
With my Celestron 1100 Edge, it was M42 also.
Keep up the great work.