Orion and the Running Man

[Ry]

http://imgur.com/XQ1DgCq
http://i.imgur.com/XQ1DgCq.jpg

Hi all! I'm quite amateur in this compared to all your fantastic work (I haven't got a telescope even) but I thought I'd try to photograph Orion anyway! The first try wasn't particularly great, but I was happy with this second attempt. Still getting a handle on processing so apologies in advance if it looks a bit blunt.

5DIII, 400mm f/5.6L, iOptron Skytracker

[acropolite]

IMO, a very good result from the skytracker, was your effort a single exposure or multiple exposures stacked?

[DJScotty]

That looks excellent. Nice composition. You don't see Orion in portrait very often. Colours are good. Nice detail. You should be very proud of that!

[Ry]

Thanks very much Scott! Quite happy with the result! It's in portrait for the silliest reason.. the part of Orion that looks like a calamari- I wanted it head up and tentacles down. Then noticed the nebula above and thought it looks like a running man. Then I learnt it was actually called running man lol.

Cheers Phil! The hardest it was polar aligning the Skytracker, considering I never polar aligned anything before and was going by 'theoretically, this should work'. Tried the polar scope and just could not figure it out, so relevelled the tripod, dialled latitude to 27.4 degrees, and pretty much guessed South and adjusted and shot and repeated for hours before I could get a usable frame. This is a result of 37 30-second frames, at f/5.6, ISO5000.

[acropolite]

Ryan, there's a polar alignment app available for the Skytracker, from memory it's $1.99. Search for ioptron Polar scope in the apple store. The android equivalent is called Polar Finder.

[Ross G]

Great capture Ryan.

Nice composition and detail.

Good luck.

Ross.

[smader]

As a fellow SkyTracker user, I'm jealous. At 400mm this is a cracker of an image!

I can't see Sigma Octanis from my viewing station at home, so sadly the iPhone app isn't much good for me. Daytime "polar" alignment seems to bear reasonable tracking results though.

[andyc]

Wow, you win the prize for best Skytracker shot :thumbsup:. Never managed to push beyond 250mm focal length, because although the polar alignment is a doddle with the PolarFinder app, the periodic error on my unit limited either exposure time or focal length. I got some nice results but nothing to match this. Looks like you have a good unit, and have done really well with it!

[Ry]

Phil: I actually did get the Polar Finder app for Android.. but it wasn't much help. I couldn't really find Octans (newb) an in the end I figured I'd just completely manually trial and error it!

Ross: Thanks very much! Just wanted to fill frame as much as I could before the image quality failed and the detail- there's never really enough is there? :)

Stacy: Thanks! It took a lot of fiddling around to get anything remotely usable. I'll admit there were times I thought I'd just have to give up and the sounds of what sounded like a boar in the bushes in the middle of nowhere out west did not help! I'm still hoping to get 560mm or 800mm with extenders, but given how long the exposure times will be, I hope I'm not being foolishly optimistic!

Andy: I gave up on the polar scope eventually, and it became a case of move it a little to the right, a little to the right, a little to the right, too much! A little to the left, a little to the left etc. Drove me bonkers. At some point, I was noticing the stars doing little wiggles too, that didn't help my confidence. Eventually something worked though, but it was very very hit and miss! I'll definitely try some minute-long exposures at some point, maybe with longer than 400mm, but I'm anticipating hours more of setup work just to polar align it.