orion in 15 sec

[doppler]

Fairly new to digital astrophotography and loving it.
Orion nebula 15 sec single sub, iso 3200, canon 1100d, 10" f4.7 eq newt, with basic tracking and coma. When I first started out with film this would have taken 60 minutes, (single sub) and way beyond my equipments capability :confused2:.
Rick

[ZeroID]

Impressive, especially for a single frame.
Well done.

[cometcatcher]

Amazing shot for 15 seconds Rick. Digital is crazy isn't it? I remember taking a shot using film with about that amount of detail with my 11" F5.2 Newt. It took over half an hour.

[John W]

Great pic - DSLRs are useful! Thanks, JW.

[icytailmark]

nice shot rick. Do you have to make any mods to your dslr to get started?

[doppler]

Thanks Mark, My camera is a stock standard 1100d canon. The 1100d can go to iso 6400 but it gets pretty noisy, 3200 seems to be a sweet spot with this camera. I did try a 450d before but it was really noisy at its max of 1600 iso and at 800 iso needed a lot longer exposure to get a result. An adaptor ring and t mount was all I needed, but my scope is a skywatcher and has the mirror setup for astrophotograpy, some scopes need their mirror moved forward to achieve focus with a camera.




Cheers John, they sure are, when I am trying to find a faint object I will take a few pics to verify my find and with a short digital pic you can see a lot more than just with the naked eye.



Thanks Kevin, I was surprised at how bright it came out. Film was great for a few seconds until reciprocity failure set in, digital has the opposite effect you have to be carefull not to over expose. I had pretty well given up on astrophotography, film was all but finished, I had a point and shoot digital but that was limited. I just wish I got a digital SLR camera sooner, but then again the prices on all these toys are so much more affordable now. I have a large paper bark blocking my view to the east so I have to wait a couple of weeks before I can have a proper go at it (and I'm keen to try for the horsehead nebula).



Thanks Brent, Its amazing what you can get from some pretty basic equipment.

[cometcatcher]

I can certainly relate to that. Wish I started with digital sooner also, but 10 years ago even a second hand 300D was like $500. So like you I had a point and shoot which was only good for wide field shots. I did use a mono frame integration video camera through the scope which somewhat bridged the gap between digital and film.

[doppler]

I used to hand hold the point and shoot to the eye piece with some degree of success, and funny that you mention video cameras, I remember filming the eclipse of the sun (hand held to the eyepiece) when the gulf war started in 1991. I still have the tape somewhere could be an interesting clip. I did have a thought of mounting that video camera but it was very large and impractical. Who would have thought that it would become the norm.

Here is the 2006 transit of mercury point and shoot eyepiece projection. Its the tiny spot right hand lower part of the sun.

[cometcatcher]

I have a couple of Mercury transits also - on tape somewhere with no player to play them on.

[Rex]

Rick, you've got some nice colour and detail for 15sec, great job. Can't wait to see what you can do by stacking.

[doppler]

You need to get those tapes onto dvd, a lot of my old cam-corder tapes had started to deterioate and some were breaking so I transfered them to full sized tapes. I did start to put them on dvd but its been on the back burner for a while. I should finish the job or the data will be lost and tape quality was not the best to start with. I do have a vcr / player and video convertor that you could borrow, or I could rip it for you.



Thanks Rex, I am looking forward to spending a bit more time imaging the orion region but I have a large tree to my east and have to stay up late (work seems to always interfere with that idea) or wait a few more weeks. But the 10" f4.7 certainly seems to catch the light well.