My first Orion

[AdrianF]

This is my first attempt at Orion. Took the photo last night through my ED127 not real good but its better than any other attempt I have made.
The alignment wasnt spot on as you can see from the star trails.
This photo was taken at ISO800 and 10 second exposure.
Beside the alignment not being good what can I do to improve the photo?
I had tried to use a 2.5 barlow but I couldnt find anything in the view finder so just went back to scope- extension tube- camera.

Adrian

[Davros]

Nice, congratulations, looks like we are playing the same game.

[dpastern]

Congrats on your first M42. Looks very similar to my first attempt (which is still my best lol!!!).

Dave

[Bassnut]

What?, did you attempt any stretching at all?. Astronomical images have a huge dynamic range, and require some , any form of nonlinear expansion.

[dpastern]

I don't think you'll get much stretch wise out of that image, not with only 10 seconds. Then again, I could (and probably are), wrong!

Dave

[AdrianF]

Except for resizing I have done nothing to the picture. I am going to try again this weekend for more data and hopefully get it in focus and tracking right. I did take about 60 pictures but I forgot to take the bahtinov off for 20 or so pictures so everything ended up with spikes.

Adrian
should mentioned that the weather will control this we have smoke and dust on the way lots of fires around here again and grey dust.

[bmitchell82]

Suggestions on your image.

you have a guide scope and a DSI, use them... then your polar alignment isn't as critical as the guiding will look after most of it.

Take longer exposures don't be affraid to bump it out to 10 min even longer with auto guiding you will blow the core out but thats when you take reduction images.

PM me and ill give you a bit of information regarding taking some photos.

this is what a 40d, eq6 and 10"sw are capable of doing when guided

http://s700.photobucket.com/albums/ww3/brendanmitchell1982/?action=view&current=Orion-Final-HQ-AFC.jpg

2x 10min 9 x 2min, 1min, 30sec, 15sec all at iso 200 no darks flats or bias processed in adobe photoshop CS3

[AdrianF]

pm sent

Adrian

[multiweb]

That's a very good first shot Adrian. I push the data a bit more and you can start making out the nebulosity around.

[pmrid]

Hi Adrian, the ED 127 is a good choice (I can say this because I just bought one myself).

The length of exposure is going to be a major limitation on the image you produce. Ten seconds on M42 in a single exposure will get you a pretty basic image. Have a look in this forum about 8 or so days back when I posted my ED127's first light. That was 3 x 10 minute exposures stacked and tweaked with Photoshop. That'll give you a sense at least of the scale that is possible in straight prime focus imaging on this scope.

I suggest that you consider guiding and, with that, the possibility of longer exposures. Then, I suggest you consider stacking multiple images and using an image processing program like Photoshop to tweak out the data that is lurking in the images.

Come down to Ten Chain Hill on one of our New Moon nights and have a play with some other imagers and see whether they can help you too.

Peter

Peter

[AdrianF]

Thanks Peter I will take you up on the offer to visit sometime but it wont be this year this is a very busy time for me at the moment. I teach at TAFE and I am currently doing the work of 3 teachers, Metal Fabrication, Fitting and Carpentary:help: my workload will be down to 2 teachers next week as a carpenter will be here from Toowoomba.
I only experimented with the scope and camera to see what I could get.
I basically gave up about 6 months ago because I couldnt get any good photos, I almost put all my gear on the market. I do have a guiding interface and software and guidescope etc but have been putting things off due to the work load and studying AutoCAD.

Once I get organised I will get things working properly and hopefully start getting some decent photos.

Adrian

[AlexN]

One thing you will want to do is really work on that polar alignment. As Brendan said, once you're guiding, polar alignment becomes less critical, however its better to have the guider doing as little work as possible, and the only way to do that is to have a good alignment.. Judging by the amount of drift you were getting in 10sec subs, I'd say your alignment was quite a long way off... (much better than my first attempts though! :D haha)

I think you could definitely benifet from a night out at 10 chain hill.. Between Peter, Robin, Jeanette, Rob and myself imaging on the field, I dare say you could pickup quite a few things... (untill we all start getting messy that is! :D )

Its a good first attempt, and you can only get better from here on out mate!

Alex.

[AdrianF]

Does look a little better.

Adrian

[RobF]

Great going for your first effort Adrian - congratulations. Once you start seeing more detail in your pics than you can every hope to see by eye in the 'scope you'll be hooked and sliding down the slippery expensive slope with the rest of us!

There's a lot of science and black magic in the processing side for astronomical imaging too - probably 50% effort in field getting great data to start with, then pretty much as long to pry out the fine detail. All part of the learning curve fun, and plenty of helpful people here to help.

Alex is right about 10 Chain if you're ever inclined to be Bris area. Good company and plenty of equipment diversity :cheers: