WaveSoarer

That's excellent and many thanks for this.

That's excellent and you've managed to frame it really nicely.

Here is another attempt at M42 from the night of the 5th January. We used a Bahtinov mask to help with focusing and the camera was set on prime focus this time. We used 9 darks and 9 flats along with 19 (I think) 30 second subs in Deep Sky Stacker. We need longer exposures I expect to improve the histogram stretching and we also need ot learn how to get the colour balance correct during the histogram stretching.

The image could also have been better centred - the running man would also make it on to the same frame.

This is one of my first attempts at M31 with a stack of 30 s exposures with an SLR. A bit of a lucky first go at prime focus - especially with the focus. I've already posted this on its own thread and apologies for posting it again. I've since processed the subs in deep sky stacker but I still like this version (stacked only in photo shop).

Oily,

I've just looked at that link and ....WOW. I'm seriously impressed.

Dave

I've used my 200p on an EQ5 for imaging, both planetary and DSO. I have the dual axis motors for tracking - which is a must for any DSO work. The Sky Watcher series allows you to mount an SLR very easily and you only need the T-ring adaptor (the 200p has a 1.25" adaptor as standard and this can be unscrewed and replaced with the T-ring - I've described this on another thread). I've found it a nice package for imaging and I can get it setup and polar aligned in my back garden in about fifteen minutes or so as it's quite a manageable weight (with the mount, counter balance weights and OTA as seperate pieces). If you want to do some very series imaging, with guiding etc, then it may be at the limits for this but I've produced some very satisfying results. I am still learning though.

A great loss and he will be sadly missed. He inspired so many and contributed so much.

After doing a little bit of planetary imaging using my modified xbox webcam, I managed to get the appropriate T-ring fitting for my wife's Nikon SLR camera. We fitted this to the telescope via the 2x Barlow lens which, thanks to the clever SW design, screws straight on to the T-ring and doubles up as a nose piece for the 1.25" EP adaptor. The first image is a single, tracked, image of M42 (the Orion Nebula) and the second image is a stacked set of 9 exposures. Mrs WaveSoarer stacked them using the layer and alignment tools in photoshop. The nebula could have been better centred and the focusing isn't perfect either. Still not too bad for a first attempt at a DSO I suppose and you can even see some colour. The images were captured on the night of 21/11/12 and the quarter moon was still well above the horizon at the time

I actually quite like the single exposure image as the trapezium is visible and there is some wispy structure in the blue coloured dust clouds behind. When we're more adventurous we'll have an attempt at some dark frame corrections, at least, as there are some brighter areas to one edge of the CCD sensor. The T-ring can easily allow the camera to be used at prime focus and we'll have a go at wider field images when conditions allow. Our first attempts at M31 were mainly the core with the vaguest hints of the central parts of the dust clouds.

Wow. Some people are incredibly fast in posting.

I puzzled about this too. A quick google found this page:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/telescope18.htm

The explanation is:

"Focal ratio or f/number relates to the brightness of the image and the width of the field of view. The focal ratio is the focal length of the objective lens or primary mirror divided by the aperture. The focal ratio concept comes from the camera world, where a small focal ratio means a short exposure time for the film, and was said to be "fast." Although the same is true for a telescope, if a "fast" and a "slow" telescope are compared at the same magnification for visual rather than photographic viewing, then both telescopes will have the same quality image."

There are some other interesting pieces of information there too. I expect that the boundary between Fast and Slow is rather fuzzy and for telescope use is perhaps a little unhelpful.