Started a m42 project.

[mill]

This is my first part of a seven part picture.
I have to take some longer exposures and a load of shorter exposures to finish this.
This picture is a stacked set of 117 5minute exposures without darks or flats.
I still have to take the darks and flats.
The good thing is that my 40D's cooling stay's on -12.5 almost constantly during the whole night and was still on -12.5 this morning at 7:00 am.
Did 80 images last night of 5 minutes and only had to throw out 12 :)
Lucky for me is that the scope and camera does not hit the legs of the eq6 mount when going thru the meridian and keeps tracking very well.

So this is part 1 of the overlay i am going to make.
Comments welcome and tips too.

[strongmanmike]

Nice start Martin, lots of faint billowing fuzz around the main nebula there :thumbsup:

Mike

[renormalised]

Nice shot...should be good to see the final product:D

[mill]

Thank you Mike, i wish i could make a mosaic from M42 all the way to the Horsehead but at this image scale it would take me forever :)



Thank you Carl :)
I hope i get enough clear nights here in Melbourne (looks like tonight will be another good night).

[AlexN]

Very smooth looking! as you'd expect for 117x5min subs!! :)

Do you plan on doing some longer subs to really bring out the faint gasses surrounding M42? and some shorter ones for the core?

[mill]

Thank you Alex :)
Yes i want to do 10 and 15 Minute subs tonight and some 1Min 30Sec and 10Sec subs in the early morning.
Then i have 6 parts and then have to decide if i want to go 25Min and/or shorter than 10Sec.
Have to wait and see (could be getting a 8 part pic :P ).

[strongmanmike]

Be nice to have an fast 8.3m sky mapper and mega million pixel CCD..could do your project, down to 24mag, in a jiffy :thumbsup:

Mike

[renormalised]

Martin will buy one once he's won the 1st prize in the "El Gordo" Lotto (900 million Euro):P:P:D:D

[mill]

900Million euro jummy :) :)
I would buy everyone here an ED80 :thumbsup: even if they didn't need it :lol:

[AlexN]

I reckon 15min subs will do it for sure! I look forward to seeing it completed..

Is it greedy of me to think that with $900M euro's, I'd bust out on 90x Canon 200mm F/1.2L's, and 90x STL11000C's, a giant EQ fork mount.. Have 10 groups of 10, each group would point at the exact same spot, and adjacent groups field of view would overlap each other by 10 arc minutes. take 1x10min exposure per individual camera/lens, you would have a 9 panel mosaic with 10x10mins per panel, a massive field of view you could probably get a very deep image of the entire night sky in about an hour.....

That would be - INSANE!

Wow.. Off topic or what!

[Bassnut]

Thats an amibtious project, I admire your perserverance (9 hrs already !).

If thats going to be your midrange exposure, theres already quite a lot of neb extention, double or triple the sub time will be very deep.

For no darks or flats, that also has some fine smooth detail, exceptionally good processing.

Blending shorter exposures to provide smaller stars overall, and stop core blowout would make this project a potential DSLR classic, given the quality so far. Hope your PS skills are honed to do the multiexposure times justice, it will be a challenge.

[mill]

Wow!! that would be nice and save a bit of time :)



Thank you Fred :)

I have done a early M42 about a month ago and layered about 5 layers but with a lot less exposures so it looked a bit grainy but the trap was visible :)

See this pic: http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/tt137/Martin_Meupelenberg/m42done.jpg

[multiweb]

That looks cool Martin. I wanna do a mosaic of Orion too when the clouds go or when I move in SA. Whichever comes first. Make sure you get registar to stitch all your panels. Easy as. Great start! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Bassnut]

I think its multipart exposure times Martins talking about Marc, not a mosaic ;)

[multiweb]

!? :lol: Didn't read properly then. Just saw the word 'mosaic' got excited and thought 'yay! I wanna do that too!'. Still moving to SA though if this weather continues ;)

[Bassnut]

Yeah, tell me about it, months of endless cloud, Im coming with you ;-).

[multiweb]

You can feel the tension in the general chat forums due to the clouds in NSW. I also reckon all the mods are in SA imaging. :P :lol: ;)

[mill]

Nice and clear here so part no 2 of M42 coming up tonight :)
Better come to Melbourne :P

[DavidU]

Thats an awesome project Martin.:thumbsup:

[AlexN]

Hahaha!! Melbourne.. Yea we'll all move to melbourne and have 2 months of clear skies a year :P hahah!

It sounds like a ripper project... As I always say, you can never have too much data..

[mill]

Thank you Dave.
Alex you are a funny bloke :)
At the moment i am getting 1 min subs x 60.

[AlexN]

I lived in Melbourne for the first 13 years of my life.. I know what the weather is like there..if you want the best weather for imaging, I vote somewhere between Alice Springs and say, Katherine in the NT. You'd get 8 months of clear skies a year, and 4 months where you'd probably get 3 nights a week...

[DavidU]

Hows it going Martin? It looks like alto cirrus cloud from here in Wantirna South.

[Octane]

Martin,

Congratulations, mate. This is something that I'm hoping to do this summer, as well.

Your camera is working gangbusters for you.

Looking forward to seeing the final outcome.

Regards,
Humayun

[mill]

It got very clear after 22:00 here David.
did 60x10Sec first and then 60x1Min and then let it rip another 30 at 15Min each.
Had to throw out some 15Min pics but not too many :)
Have to do some more when there is no moon.




Thank you Humayun.

The camera works well although it only cooled to -4.5 last night because of the warm weather :)
Will see what i get out of this and see if it is worth posting.

Martin.