This one is only 11 minutes of data captured last night 29 frames darks and lights applied cropped and resized in PS7 adjusted for curves levels etc
Unguided as I still haven't got my laptop back, 20 frames 15 seconds and about the same 45 seconds ISO800
Canon 350d unmodified
I can see some definite improvement both in focus and colour compare to the Pentax
Great colour balance there, yep, when you get the guiding going again, if you can go for a few minutes for each sub, you will get a really deep shot of M42.
I find the best way to focus is to take short 5 second test shots at ISO 1600, then zoom in to check star sizes, then slightly move focus and try agin, keep tweaking till stars asr as small as possible. If they get bigger just tweak focuser the other way
Scott
Good to hear you've had it out imaging Trevor! The noise levels look better than the Pentax already, and when you push it out to longer subs you'll find the results to be very good indeed..
The longest subs I've ever run with it were 12.5mins on M42 and the results were pleasing, I just didnt get time to do some short subs to tame the trap...
Despite M42 being a seemingly easy target because its big and bright, its actually one of the harder/hardest to get spot on... due to the massive dynamic range between the trap/core area right out to the dusty Ha regions surrounding M42 and between M42 and the running man, it can be incredibly hard to capture all of that data, then blend it all to evenly expose the whole image...
The 3 best M42's I've seen (which cycle as my desktop backgrounds) Come from Rob Gendler, Greg Bradley and an American photographer (who's name now eludes me) all of these image consist of more than 10 hours exposure, (Rob Gendlers image is 90 hours total exposure!!!!) and have exposure durations of 5sec, 10sec, 20sec, 30sec, 1min, 5min, 10min, 20 min and a few half an hour subs..
Captureing all this data is a MISSION! Processing large sets of data is a whole other world...
Earlier this year I had the lovely idea of attempting this...
I have 60x10sec, 20x30sec, 40x5min, 20x10min and 12x30min exposures of Orion on my hard drive.. Nearly 13hrs total... I've been working on processing these for nearly a month now, and getting nowhere fast...
Dont be too worried if M42 is something that you dont nail in the first season.. From what I'm told, Few people actually NAIL it at all.. Perhaps set your sights on something just as impressive to look at, but with a bit less dynamic range... Eta Carine is the Ultimate southern sky astrophotography schoolground.. Its big, its bright, but the important fact is that its uniformly bright.. not excessively bright in one area, and mind numbingly dim in others... You can run 10x10min subs of Eta and get a great image without all the hastles of M42's painful processing.. I did 25 minute subs on Eta Car about a month and a half ago and did not oversaturate the image anywhere... Fantastic target to learn imaging and processing...
Huge improvement over earlier Pentax shots Trevor. You must be happy with those!
Watch out though! Me thinks you may have just crossed over the imaging event horizon - and are plumetting into its expensive time consuming depths with countless other IIS dreamers.....
Good first results Trev! 
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