First attempt at astrophotography - Orion Nebula

[Eddy_]

Here's my first attempt at DSO photography. This was taken using my camera on a gorillapod, balanced on my daughter's Little Tikes play car as that's the only place in my garden I could see Orion over the trees The moon was quite bright too, not sure how much of a difference that makes.

Details: Olympus Pen E-P5 (micro 4/3 system), Olympus 75mm lens f1.8, ISO 2500, 50 x 2 second exposures, 17 darks, 36 bias, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker then cropping and minor tweaking of the levels and noise reduction in Lightroom.

Looking forward to getting an EQ mount for longer exposures (still deciding which!).

[Eddy_]

Looks like I need to stop the lens down a bit, there's obvious CA around the brighter stars.. Lesson learned for next time!

[Alien 13]

A realy i mean realy good image especially considering the "mount" you certainly got the processing skills pretty much nailed.

I have uses camera lenses and find stopping them down helps with focus and SA but not so much the CA so its worth experimenting.

I realy am impressed.

Alan

[Sandancer10]

A very good image and it's a wonder you got it at all considering the 'mount'. 

[daverave83]

Not bad image for your first try.

It may be worth adjusting the levels, as there is quite alot of blue within the image.

The best way to do it.

Make a copy of the image in photoshop.

Goto > Image > Adjustments> Levels.

On the RGB filter change to Red Make sure the Black arrow meets the first curve of the peak and the middle greyshade arrow meets the last curve on the peak, do the same for green and blues.

Make a copy of the image

then goto >image>adjustment>curves

move the middle line slightly to the left.

Go back to levels and adjust the RGB filter again black arrow meets the first curve on the peak then the greyish middle arrow meets the last curve on the peak .

Save and repost 

[Eddy_]

Thanks for the advice- here's a less blue version

[daverave83]

Thats so much better.

You can get upto 20 - 30 secs exposures before field rotation becomes a problem, give it a go and see what results you get.

Use curves and levels as much as you can particulary the RGB Channels, also use Hue and Saturation but not too much.

there is another tool which can be useful - Colour Match - you can adjust the each colour filter i.e. Magenta so that the colour balance is better.

Then there are layer masks > Reveal All/Hide All if you want to increase the nebulosity.

[Eddy_]

Thats so much better.

You can get upto 20 - 30 secs exposures before field rotation becomes a problem, give it a go and see what results you get.

Use curves and levels as much as you can particulary the RGB Channels, also use Hue and Saturation but not too much.

there is another tool which can be useful - Colour Match - you can adjust the each colour filter i.e. Magenta so that the colour balance is better.

Then there are layer masks > Reveal All/Hide All if you want to increase the nebulosity.

Thanks for the tips. The stars begin to elongate at 4 seconds with this lens (150mm equivalent), so i'm stuck with short exposures at the moment, i'll try longer with my shorter lenses for wider field shots.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Here's my first attempt at DSO photography. This was taken using my camera on a gorillapod, balanced on my daughter's Little Tikes play car as that's the only place in my garden I could see Orion over the trees

Nice work. In all the history of Astronomy, that must be a world first for the use of that mount. 

[pragmatist]

Very nice first try, good one.