M42 - My first Deep Sky Photo

[Peje]

Really enjoyed this one, the sky was clear last night (unexpectedly so) and the wind disappeared for a few hour. Combining this with the rare event that my son went to bed early I thought it would be mad not to have a go.

Firstly I have to thank one of the guys on the forum, Sheltser1973 (not sure if I can tag him), as over the last couple of months he has been extremely patient in providing my with lots of advice and inspiration.

I went out and firstly set everything up to have a go at M31. 25 lights @ 30sec/ISO1600 along with associated darks, flats & bias. While this was running I was mulling over something Paul had told me about him aiming to have a go at M42 this winter. I have the messier list as my desktop background so I had a quick look and noticed it was a lower mag figure than M31 so potentially would be easier to shoot. Once my run had finished I turned my attention to M42 just to see what I'd be looking at.

Once AstroTortilla returned the first 10sec shot I was hooked! I took 30 lights and so on and after an hour it was time for bed so I packed up and headed in, wishing I didn't have to get up early in the morning as there was still a few hours of clear sky. Didn't sleep terribly well due to excitement of firing up the AstroPC on my lunch and starting the processing. I ran it through DSS then some minor tweeks in Lightroom to get the attached image. It's certainly not mind-blowing but I'm happy; & determined to do better! I wish I'd started with it from the off and then I would have had more time to experiment but this is life.

I need to get the guide camera functional (I haven't managed to get it focused yet but hopefully I have all the info and parts to resolve this) to allow me to get longer exposures & lower ISO to get more detail.

All in all I think this is definitely the hobby for me, it's certainly involved a lot of expenditure over the last year but I now seem to have a setup that's capable of everything I want to do...for now

Pete

[seo]

Very nice first DSO. Congrats.

[laudropb]

Very nice image, especially for a first attempt. Well done.

[Peje]

Plenty of the credit needs to go to Paul, I wouldn't have know about darks, etc without his input.

Last night has certainly peaked my enthusiasm for AP.

[Adamar98]

That's not bad at all. I tip my hat. ; )