[evltoy (Wayne)]

Hello All,

As some would know I have myself a Celestron Evolution8 (noneHD) setup.

A few nights ago by pure luck I stumbled onto M8- Lagoon Nebula while I was setting up to take shots of the moon. As I wasn't prepared to take images of any DSO I just thought... what the heck let just see what happens as I was excited to have found M8 in the first place.

My setup is my old Nikon D80 DSLR attached to the C8 with the celestron T-adaptor. No filters, no reducers..... very plain Jane. As my D80 doesn't have live view I had to focus as best I could on a star I could see through the view finder. I only have a very basic remote, so the best I could do for exposure times was 30sec and take as many as I could... did around 60 frames.

Like I said... I wasn't prepared or did any research on shooting for DSO yet, so now I find out my exposure times were very short.

After reviewing my images I found that 95% of them were pretty good. So my question is:

What would be a reasonable max exposure time I should get using a Altazimuth mount when tracking well?

Here is my first ever image of a Nebula and using Post processing software DSS & PS. I dont have a clue what I'm doing. lol

Cheers
Wayne