Orion Neb using 20Da from Lostock

[RB]

This was my first serious shot of the evening (Saturday night) at Lostock.
Orion neb region.
I was using Louie's (Atalas) G11 mount and his 80ED.
Camera was the Canon 20Da set at 800 ISO and 120sec exposure and incamera noise reduction which doubles the time it takes to write the file :sad: .
Levels, colour, cropping all adjustments done in Photoshop, also used Neat image to finish off.

Unfortunately a satellite crossed the FOV during exposure :mad2:
I only took one shot so the trap region is overexposed.

Comments most welcome.

[ving]

hey andrew, nice pic :)

i think the satelite ads character :D

[h0ughy]

thats a great shot, my feeble efforts with the pentax and the orion express is here to compare and show what a magnificent shot you took.

[ving]

at least yours doenst have a satelite in ti houghy ;)
great shot by all means :)

[Thiink]

.. satellites werent a problem for h0ughy, it was the green laser pointers.. :lol:

Nice shots both of you!

[davidpretorius]

Sorry guys, but I like both of these for one main reason: both are great pics! pull these shots out at a dinner party and watch the mouths drop.

It is intersting to be able to compare a 350d class camera and it's bigger brother the 20da.

I can't wait to play with a 350d!

Well done guys, I like em a lot!!

[RB]

Thanks guys, yeah ving as always your right, it's not that bad with the sattelite.
:)
Cheers Houghy.
Your focus and tracking was good Dave, what camera setting did you use?

[Orion]

Great shots guys, I agree that the laser pointers were a bit annoying. Something that we all had to deal with especially on the third night.

[Striker]

Nice detail for just 1 exposure Andrew.

Well done mate.

If your useing the ED80 then that Tak of yours is not needed hay....lol

[RB]

That's why I didn't bring it.... :lol:

[Dennis]

Great (and different) images of a really interesting and spectacular astronomical region.

Thanks for posting guys; starved of clear skies up in Brissie right now.

Dennis

[tornado33]

Nice work folks. I think In Camera noise reduction is the go simply because it removes the need to do it in software later, and I do imagine Canon has it set up so it works best with their CMOS sensors. This might be worth the xtra time taken.

[RB]

Yep I agree with you T33.
The first time I tried this feature in long exposure I got a shock and thought my camera was broken.... :doh: :lol:
It's well worth the time, but I seem to get a bit impatient when I'm out there under those beautiful dark skies, too eager to see the result. :rolleyes:

[Striker]

I too would have used the in camera noise reduction but remember someone with high knowledge in this area saying it's not worth doing and making darks is a far better option....there was a reason but was too technical for me.

Worth a go even though it's going to cause a loss of exposure time.

[h0ughy]

I haven't edited the picture at all, just made it smaller for the site, the details were as shown

[h0ughy]

ahh small point to raise, mine is a Pentax *istDS :P

[atalas]

Andrew a very impressive two minute exposure dude ! well done and Houghy don't knock your self around mate ,yours is very good too mate .

[asimov]

Thats a pearler of a shot Andrew! Congrats.

Nice shot too Houghy!

[acropolite]

Nice start Andrew, makes me want to rip the filter out of my 20D... :confuse3:

[meade expert]

Very nice Andrew...
Was it manually guided or auto guided ?

[Lester]

Great photo chaps. I have just learnt how to focus 20Da and guess what forcast is for 6 days rain and showers. So at least I can drawl over your astrophotos.:astron:

[RB]

Thanks Louie, John Asi and Phil. It was a real buzz taking this shot through Louie's equipment.
John and Phil I wish you guys were there too along with David_P and Ving, it would have capped off the perfect astrocamp.
:prey: :)


Joe it was just in tracking mode no guiding because we couldn't get the autoguiding to work properly.
It's good tracking for 2 minutes isn't it?

Lester the focus mode on the 20Da is simply awesome, what a great idea.
When I was using the standard 18-55mm lens to do wide field astro work, you could actually see the star going from fuzzy to a tight dot and back out to fuzzy and at the same time watched the chromatic aberration change colour around the star as you swing through the focus point, amazing stuff.
The 20Da is a great fully featured astro camera and also make a terrific daytime camera and you don't need to use any extra filters to compensate if you wish. Works almost exactly like the standard 20D.

Cheers all.

[davidpretorius]

yes it would have been great, unfortunately you would not have had time to take this great shot, cos we would have been giggling and spamming eah other...

Daniel and I are going to give this a try in march with his 350d. So i am keen to compare to your 20da shot and houghys pentax (350 class)

[acropolite]

Yeah would have been fantastic, hopefully we will get to Qld Astrofest this year as we have rellies there. :D

[videoguy]

Hi Andrew

I think that's a really nice picture...Was there a focal reduce used? It's like a prime focus f/4.5 photo of about 20 minutes exposure taken with 1000 ASA film!

I had a go at M42 also the other evening with an 80mm refractor - first time for me actually but with a 1/2 CCD chip could barely fit it on the frame at f7.5.
see: http://myastroshop.com.au/guides/swed80.asp

Steve

[RB]

Thanks Steve, no I didn't use a reducer. It was imaged at f/7.5.
Thanks for the link, very interesting to see the Minatron images and image scale.
http://myastroshop.com.au/guides/swed80.asp

Cheers

[Lester]

G'day Rocket Boy,

Thanks for your comments reguarding focussing the 20Da. I have ordered a infra red cut out filter for daytime photos because ocassionally parts of the photo would show up excessively red. Had some trouble tracking filter down but one is supposed to arrive in about 3 weeks. I could not find any in Australia.:astron:

[RB]

Cheers Lester,

I'll have to have a closer look at my day time shots as I haven't used it that much for daytime. I know there's a slight colour cast, but doesn't worry me at all. Let me know how you go with the filter, I'd be very interested in your results.

[danielsun]

Great shots guys!!

And congrats on winning the argo rocket boy!!!! ;)