Orion, is this any better

[proflight2000]

Well I shall keep on trying as practise makes well slightly reasonable in my case. I took this picture this evening, I am still having star trail issues even though I polar aligned prior to taking anything. I used photoshop to cut some of the trails and to slightly bring forwards a bit of the colour that was in the picture. There is a pretty bright bit in the middle but I cannot find anyway of taking it down. Cheers.

[geoff_k]

There are some good colours in there and seeing as the Moon is about I reckon that is a good effort.

Are you using a focal reducer as that will help tracking and cut down on the star trails.

Geoff

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

PF, looks like you had a wind issue rather than tracking. The trails show bright at both ends with nothing much in the middle. This could be the wind taking up the backlash in the worm drive.

Great image really, because M42 has a huge range of brightness you need to do many exposures and fiddle the end result in Photoshop or similar. It just doesn't like a single frame shot.

Keep at it, you're really close to the spot on image, all you need is less wind and moon and it'll just work for you.

Captain Chaos

[geppetto]

Agreed, the conditions robbed you of a geat shot there but

otherwise your set to go 8)

Keep at it and well done

[CELESCOPE]

getting there PF, but a little more info needed, as CC says could be the wind causing those trails, we all have those probs , but have the luxery with our ccd cams to eliminate those frames that are carp .not sure how many frames you took , if they are short exposures, are all the frames the same, if so , then it may not be the wind , as you tend to get a few out at least in between the gusts, guess u need to try this on a fairly still night to confirm that , focus may be a tad out , but not by much, the core of M42 is always a prob and needs shorter exposures, these then are layered to reduce that washed out core,but like all this imaging , it takes time a huge learning curve , plenty of frustration, you will get there in the end

Rog