Orion's pelvis at 400mm

[alocky]

After carefully setting up at 2:00am so that comet Catalina 2013 would rise exactly behind a tree, I took 20 x 60sec subs of Orion using the Takahashi FSQ106 with 0.73 reducer, and the Nikon D810A. This is a first pass processing job, and I didn't bother with any shorter subs to do a HDR on the trapezium, but I'm quite pleased with how deep the 810A went in 20 minutes.
After discovering the arboreal occultation and instigating a panicked 20m relocation effort which reduced my 30min imaging window I got a single 60s shot of Catalina before the dawn washed it out. There's always next weekend and the 'test' target turned out quite well.
Full resolution at:
http://www.astrobin.com/231755/
cheers,
Andrew.

[Atmos]

That combination works really well it would appear! Only 20 minutes and it did go very deep. Very nice :)

[vlazg]

I love this area, great image :thumbsup:

[alpal]

Hi Andrew,
what a lovely shot.
That FSQ really does a good job in the right hands.

cheers
Allan

[RobF]

Wowser. What a great shot! :)

[topheart]

Andrew,

That is a fantabulous image! Great widefield image....worthy of further recognition indeed.

Great composition and detail.

Cheers,
Tim

[RickS]

Epic result, Andrew!

[alocky]

Thanks Rick - of course now I need to get some more integration to clean up the bottom left. And revisit my PI workflow for DSLR images!!



Thanks for the kind words, Tim - I think the little FSQ would look nice on a DDM85, but it might be slight overkill!



Thanks Rob - I was in such a foul mood for messing up the tiny window on Catalina that this made me feel a bit better about only getting 2 hrs sleep.



Thanks Allan, very kind! I can't believe how tight the stars are on these things, even with a reducer in place. The FSQ will be buried with me.



Thanks Geoffrey, it's so rich and varied that almost any combination of focal length can produce a great image of this part of the sky.



Thanks Colin, the dark skies helped, and now I'm wondering what a few hours would bring!

[jenchris]

Cool as.......

[Paul Haese]

It really is incredible how much dust is in that area.

Nice colour Andrew but maybe just a tad too stretched. However, the detail more than makes up for that and could not be even conceived with a DSLR even just 10 years and with such short integration.

[multiweb]

Love the field. That's a classic. Plenty of dust in there. More data will make it a lot smoother. Cool pic. Well done. :thumbsup:

[alocky]

Thanks Marc - considering it was a dry run for the failed comet session it worked out well. I think I'll make it the main event for next weekend and put a few hours on it. I do like the framing!



Thanks Paul - the noise is definitely starting to show up at that stretch, but that will print a lot darker and should look pretty good.



Cheers Jennifer!

[DJT]

What a great image, so much stuff going on:thumbsup:

[Stevec35]

That is extremely impressive to get that sort of detail with a fairly short exposure! I well remember the old days when it was considered good just to get Barnard's loop.

Cheers

Steve