Just joining in the fun... my first astrophoto in months (thanks Canberra weather), of course it's going to be M42 The Great Orion Nebula and the nearby "Running Man" Nebula NGC 1977 on the right.
This image is a combination of lots of 40 second and 15 second images - 1 hour and 7 mins in total - taken with my Nikon D5100 on 6" F/5 Bintel reflector. Really could do with a coma corrector and a finer spider. Oh yeah, and better tracking - hence the short subs.
I know how you feel - its seems like ages since there were reasonable conditions and not much moonlight.
Beautiful image and detail - I'm very envious because I've just had a go at M42 and your image puts me to shame, although I don't have nearly as much data as you - only 11 minutes and I've only used DSS to process. Last night the clouds cam in before I could get more subs, unfortunately.
I'm keeping a copy of your M42 as something to aim for. Hope the Canberra skies stay clear.
Cam, I'm surprised that you cannot get longer subs. With very good
P.A. and a 750mm F.L. scope you should get at least 120-150 secs.
Nice job for short subs, and nice job for any length subs.
raymo
Cheers guys. I needed to do drift alignment as I couldn't see the south (I still haven't upgraded the software in the HEQ5). Being lazy, I did the bare minimum.