A short dirty Orion

[Karlzburg]

Trying out a different set up, it's only 2 1/2 mins total.

ISO 400
20 sec subs
wrong darks
bloody moon, cloud and poor tracking

[xelasnave]

To say "dirty" is un necessarily negative.
It is a great image and one that you can add to one with a blown out core at some stage.
Alex

[RyanJones]

You've got to start somewhere mate. New mount, new scope, new OAG the list goes on. Once you've got all the dirties out the way, you'll be blowing us away with beautiful clear images. I spent the first 3 nights with my SW102 just trying things and learning the OTA and that's with the rest of the equipment that I already know. Keep going buddy. Looking forward to seeing more :)

[sil]

it is a good start. We all have such dirty pics in our collections :) Use it to learn how to improve and you won't take such a picture again, you'll quickly have the instinct to know when your gear is in focus, when you're overexposing subs, overprocessing, whatever the factor just change one thing at a time. And of course enjoy the exploration, I'm always astounded how great we can take astrophotos these days with fairly little!

[Karlzburg]

New set up Sil, so I'm having to learn all over again. I got some amazing shots with my little newt, now it's a RC8 on a new mount. With the amount of cloud and early starts for work makes it a little difficult :lol: soon I'm hoping.

[Karlzburg]

The image I have put up was for a friend of mine to view, nothing more nothing less. I know I can produce better as I have done so in the past.

If someone gets a laugh so be it, at least I'm imaging unlike like some.

Cheers
Karl

[Startrek]

Karl
No ones laughing, I know how many things you have to do to capture and process an image especially with a new set up
Are you tracking on EQMOD sidereal as I find it much better than the Synscan handcontroller
Also with M42 I found taking 25 to 40 short subs @ 30 or 40 sec with 15 darks is enough to bring out all the detail for your processing
My ISO was 1600 on the images I posted last week , 400 seems a little low ?
I still auto guide on short subs to keep the Stars round and tight across the FOV
Keep experimenting and you will nail a good one sooner than you think
Cheers
Martin

[mynameiscd]

Hi Karl,
Quite a fair image esp with the moon up, cloud and tracking problems.
I've got hundreds of images of Orion that all you see is couple of stars with some blurry stuff around it and it's out of focus as well.
I'm just starting to get my head around imaging and then I go off in a different direction and start playing around with HDR and noise reduction and go back to the drawing board and play with old data when I should be outside getting new and better data.
Keep on putting up images because the more you do the better they get.
Like you said at least you're out there imaging.
Cheers
Andy

[RyanJones]

If nothing else I think this image serves as an excellent demonstration to anyone who is looking into getting into imaging that it is a very difficult hobby. Karl has not been imaging for many years as some others on this site have and yet has, in the past, produced some beautiful images. He has now changed his entire setup which requires many many hours of trial and tuning to get right. Again it serves to show that what we as astrophotographers do is not as simple as pointing our scopes to the heavens and pulling the trigger. I personally applaud you Karl for having the courage to post his progress rather than wait till he's " nailed " it. As Sil stated in his post, we all have dirty pics in our collections because imaging objects thousands of light years away just isn't that easy. Those that partake in this amazing hobby know this only too well.

[silv]

Ryan, thank you for the kick in the butt. I didn't mean my post offensive and I have seen Karl's images in the past so I know with his old gear he already was ahead of anything I had produced when I was doing it.

I have deleted it as per your suggestion which I now share.

Karl, I didn't mean to annoy you and I'm sorry. I thought you meant it as a documentation of what can go wrong on an imaging night with new gear and the environment working against one's goal. And laughing about such an experience with other forum members would be okay.
I'm sorry to have posted my offensive joke.

Cheers Annette