Help on Integration Time - Orion

[PKay (Peter)]

Hi Brains trust

Tonight I want to go for broke. Have my scope aligned, PHD is good.

This morning I took 20 of 30s lights (darks etc) for integration time of 10 minutes (see attached image).

Still not enough detail.

My question is, what integration time do should I go for?

[Atmos (Colin)]

In short, the more the better
Think of an hour as a minimum.

[PKay (Peter)]

Thanks and sorry to bug you all so much.
I will be out of your hair soon enough :-)

So tomorrow I can see Orion from 3AM to 5AM (twilight starts) so that gives me 2 hours.
So my plan is 120 exposures at 1 minute each.

Is that OK?

[bojan]

What camera do you use?
I had good results with Canon 60D, 16x 1 min.

But yes, as Colin says, more the better.

Also, pay attention to focus... bahtinov mask may be very helpful
And dark(er) site of course.

[sil (Steve)]

yep, lots I'm waiting for orion to be up at a sensible hour so i can add to last years data, and the year before that...

it depends really also on your processing and how well you can push signal and reduce noise. there are ways and means, lots of practice, take notes, build a workflow that works for you to get a result.you may be clipping blacks too much, I think there is more in your data for you to pull out of the darkness.