Widefield View of The Dumbell Nebula

[ashworthacca]

Last night was the first night in months that I have had the chance to get out and do a bit of imaging. It was an extremely clear night and it was the first time I have ever seen the Milky Way from my back garden. However, it was very breezy but I managed to grab 45 90 second subs of The Dumbell Nebula with my Astrotrac and Canon 70-200 f4L lens at 200mm. The image is cropped to get rid of quite a bit of coma but some still is quite visible on the right hand side of the image....I think its coma or the alignment was out??

Anyway, here is what I got.....I'm glad I remembered what to do after all this time.

The Dumbell Nebula M27 by ashworthacca, on Flickr

[fatwoul]

Love it! Seeing things like M27 hanging amongst the stars really puts it into context. Fantastic.

[JonH]

Nice one Martin, loving the star colours.

[ashworthacca]

Thanks guys

[dgsgc]

Brilliant, i love seeing these objects in widefield more than extreme close ups, and with a 200mm lens as well, awesome...

[ashworthacca]

Brilliant, i love seeing these objects in widefield more than extreme close ups, and with a 200mm lens as well, awesome...

ta muchly:D

[JimStan]

Don't be too hard on yourself. That is a NICE picture !

I am using an un-modified Nikon D-80. I do not see the reds in my images. They are stacks of much shorter light frames. Do you think I can expect to get more red with longer exposures, or will that part of the spectrum always be darker due to the IR filter ?

I've been around in astronomy for YEARS, but am a real novice at astro-photography with a digital camera.

Jim S

[ashworthacca]

Thanks Jim, sorry for the late reply.....just back from a 2 week holiday in Greece!!

Longer exposures will always reveal more red than shorter exposures but as far as I know the IR filter in Nikon DSLR is quite extreme and does tend to block too much compared to Canon ones.

I have never used Nikon cameras before so I'm not 100% sure what you should do to achieve better red signal but I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will post some helpful tips.

Regards