Orion's pelvis at 400mm

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

After carefully setting up at 2:00am so that comet Catalina 2013 would rise exactly behind a tree, I took 20 x 60sec subs of Orion using the Takahashi FSQ106 with 0.73 reducer, and the Nikon D810A. This is a first pass processing job, and I didn't bother with any shorter subs to do a HDR on the trapezium, but I'm quite pleased with how deep the 810A went in 20 minutes.
After discovering the arboreal occultation and instigating a panicked 20m relocation effort which reduced my 30min imaging window I got a single 60s shot of Catalina before the dawn washed it out. There's always next weekend and the 'test' target turned out quite well.
Full resolution at:
http://www.astrobin.com/231755/
cheers,
Andrew.

[Atmos (Colin)]

That combination works really well it would appear! Only 20 minutes and it did go very deep. Very nice

[vlazg (George)]

I love this area, great image

[alpal]

Hi Andrew,
what a lovely shot.
That FSQ really does a good job in the right hands.

cheers
Allan

[RobF (Rob)]

Wowser. What a great shot!

[topheart]

Andrew,

That is a fantabulous image! Great widefield image....worthy of further recognition indeed.

Great composition and detail.

Cheers,
Tim

[RickS (Rick)]

Epic result, Andrew!

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

Originally Posted by RickS

Epic result, Andrew!

Thanks Rick - of course now I need to get some more integration to clean up the bottom left. And revisit my PI workflow for DSLR images!!

Originally Posted by topheart

Andrew,

That is a fantabulous image! Great widefield image....worthy of further recognition indeed.

Great composition and detail.

Cheers,
Tim

Thanks for the kind words, Tim - I think the little FSQ would look nice on a DDM85, but it might be slight overkill!

Originally Posted by RobF

Wowser. What a great shot!

Thanks Rob - I was in such a foul mood for messing up the tiny window on Catalina that this made me feel a bit better about only getting 2 hrs sleep.

Originally Posted by alpal

Hi Andrew,
what a lovely shot.
That FSQ really does a good job in the right hands.

cheers
Allan

Thanks Allan, very kind! I can't believe how tight the stars are on these things, even with a reducer in place. The FSQ will be buried with me.

Originally Posted by vlazg

I love this area, great image

Thanks Geoffrey, it's so rich and varied that almost any combination of focal length can produce a great image of this part of the sky.

Originally Posted by Atmos

That combination works really well it would appear! Only 20 minutes and it did go very deep. Very nice

Thanks Colin, the dark skies helped, and now I'm wondering what a few hours would bring!

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

Cool as.......

[Paul Haese]

It really is incredible how much dust is in that area.

Nice colour Andrew but maybe just a tad too stretched. However, the detail more than makes up for that and could not be even conceived with a DSLR even just 10 years and with such short integration.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Love the field. That's a classic. Plenty of dust in there. More data will make it a lot smoother. Cool pic. Well done.

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Love the field. That's a classic. Plenty of dust in there. More data will make it a lot smoother. Cool pic. Well done.

Thanks Marc - considering it was a dry run for the failed comet session it worked out well. I think I'll make it the main event for next weekend and put a few hours on it. I do like the framing!

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

It really is incredible how much dust is in that area.

Nice colour Andrew but maybe just a tad too stretched. However, the detail more than makes up for that and could not be even conceived with a DSLR even just 10 years and with such short integration.

Thanks Paul - the noise is definitely starting to show up at that stretch, but that will print a lot darker and should look pretty good.

Originally Posted by jenchris

Cool as.......

Cheers Jennifer!

[DJT (David)]

What a great image, so much stuff going on

[Stevec35 (Steve)]

That is extremely impressive to get that sort of detail with a fairly short exposure! I well remember the old days when it was considered good just to get Barnard's loop.

Cheers

Steve