[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

I figured it was time to dabble in some DSO's, so last week I bought a Saxon ED80, along with the appropriate adapters to attach my Canon 350D to it.

I gave it first light on Saturday morning, 15th September, from my backyard at about 4am. The seeing wasn't good enough to image Mars with my 12", so I went widefield and put the ED80 on the EQ6 and captured my first DSO!

EQ6, Saxon ED80, Canon 350D.
16x 30s exposures @ ISO800, ICNR on, mirror lockup on, unguided.

I kept the exposures to 30s because I wasn't sure how accurate my alignment was (I didn't dift align) and I wasn't guiding. By the end of the session the sky was brightening and the last few frames had a much bluer background and had to be reduced in processing.

I used ImagesPlus for stacking, and I added the images rather than averaging them to reduce noise. After averaging, the result was too dim due to the short exposures, and stretching the levels reduced the dynamic range too much, bringing out too much grain and made the image look shallow.
After adding, the image was bright enough and I used Noiseware to reduce the noise. Further saturation, levels and curves were adjusted in Photoshop, as well as masking of the core to reveal the fine detail in the trapezium.

I'm really happy with my real image of a Deep Space object! I'm looking forward to dabbling a bit more, eventually with guiding and longer exposures.

Thanks for looking.