Widefield with 80ED

[Striker (Tony)]

HI All,

I had a great night out at AstroRons place last night and this morning with around 20 people present....best night I have had so far.

Seeing was not great with a lot of star twinkling and movement...never the less it was fantastic to actualy give the 20DA a go at a dark site for the first time.

I only took my EQ6 with the Orion 80ED on top and off course the 20DA.

I have a few more shots to process but these two are by far the best.

Taken with the Orion 80ED Prime focus

Both are just 1 x 5 minute image ISO 800 manualy guided through the Iluminated reticle eyepiece....what a task this was but I was stoked with the result...I need a laptop.

I have applied a Flat frame (I think..lol) but no darks yet...very minimal processing as I was only working with 1 image.

Had to highly compress ETA carina for forum posting guidelines to a point I am not happy with but I will upload the single Raw image for both of these so you can see what I had from the start to work with.

Comments welcomed....and please comment if I have darken these to far like usual.

You can download the 2 raw images from here...anyone can have a go.
http://www.users.on.net/~striker/

The 2 files are ETA Carina.cr2 & Orion.cr2...both are over 7MB

[Stu]

That's unreal.
Go the 80mm scope! You show-em!

[Starkler (Geoff)]

Well done Tony, I like your m42 as it captures some of the fainter outer parts which a lot dont seem to capture in their shots.

[iceman (Mike)]

WOW!

Awesome stuff Tony, incredible shots.

[33South (Chris)]

Great images, worth all the guiding effort. Gotta love that ED80.

[h0ughy (David)]

lets see, I have a 80mm scope, I have an EQ6, I don't have the skill and certainly not the 20Da.. I am on my way Tony, to get to your level. Thats tops mate!

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I seriously want that camera. The raw frames that Tony was pulling out were simply unbelievable. I'll post some of mine taken with the 80ed and the 300D later for comparison. After I've done a mass of processing

Brilliant shots Tony. Make sure you post the horsehead even just to show the what that machine can capture.

[beren]

Freaking awesome tony , the M42 shot is a pearler heaps of detail on the boundaries to, out in the field too well done

[Striker (Tony)]

Thanks guys....I couldn't be happier with the results....please download the original Raw file and see what I had to play with....their's not that much difference to the final image

I also did some piggyback shots with the Canon 100mm F2 lense....but I am getting these blue ring around all the bright stars on every shot.

Paul(1Ponders) was kind enough to let me us his canon 2x Achromatic teleconverter making it a 200mm lense.

These blue rings around the star...is this due to using a teleconverter or possibly because the converter was a Achromatic....

After using Pauls 2x converter I have put one on my shopping list....but I need to know the cause of this before I buy 1....

[Dennis]

Awesome images, simply delicious to feast on their beauty! Well done Tony, you had an extremely productive night.

Cheers

Dennis

[asimov (John)]

Very Nice Tony!! Congrats on some really nice imaging & on manual guiding!

[Stu]

The blue rings just look like the natural chromatic abberation from that lens. Does the same thing happen when the lens is on a different camera?

[Dave47tuc (David)]

I normaly don't comment on peoples photos, mainly I think everyone does a great job. I just enjoy looking at them

But I must say Tony they are very good. Was not so long ago your thinking of what scope to buy or what eyepiece to own.
You have come along way in a short amount of time.
Well done

[TidaLpHasE]

Awsome images Tony, they are great.

Can you explain how you manually guided through the Iluminated reticle eyepiece, if the camera was prime focus, where does the IRE go

I was thinking of getting an Orion Illuminated cordless from Bintels, now i am thinking how would i use it when the camera is at prime focus, does it mean i need an off-axis guider as well

Also, could you see sigma octans in the polar scope, was it easy to get polar alignment?

Again Awsome pics, that wide field showing the Horse Head is amazing.

[atalas]

Nice work Tony ! your 20DA is proving to be a great choice in camera for you

[Rodstar (Rod)]

Tony, great images, which speak highly of:

1. The Orion 80ED
2. The 20DA camera
3. The heavens; and
4. Your fantastic astro-imaging skills, you LEGEND!

I am very interested to see if anyone else can capture such a good image of the Horsehead with their ED80 coupled with different imaging gear.

The more I see the ED80 in action, the more convinced I am of its worth.

[avandonk]

Stunning result Striker!That Canon 20DA does the job on H alpha.Imagine with some stacking etc would be even better.Would love to see how it goes with the 300mm F2.8L.

Bert

[davidpretorius]

wow!

well done!

[Striker (Tony)]

Thanks guys for your kind words.

Can you explain how you manually guided through the Iluminated reticle eyepiece, if the camera was prime focus, where does the IRE go

Trevor,

I was waiting for someone to ask me this question...lol....Paul had a small refractor.....I think it was a 60mm with a FL of around 400mm...Once I took the canon off the losmandy dovetail piggy back...this little set up happened to be arranged in a small set off Losmandy guide rings so we just set it up on top of the ED80.

It was at times very uncomfortable visualy guiding through the eyepiece due to the uncomfortable positions....but I had never done any exposures longer then 60 seconds before so it was very exciting.

I didn't do a polar align...just did a basic drift align using the iluminated reticle eyepiece...

Next time I promise I will take 10's of images so I can stack them....I did take multiple's of images of all the above but some were not up to standard due to my guiding ability...so I didn't want to stack ordinery images over reasonably sharp and well guided images.