Embarassing Orion with planetary setup.....

[Ringrocket]

Hello,

I'm totally new to deepsky and I have a setup which is more suited to planetary work (Maksutof-150 f12 and DBK camera).

However I couldn't resist aiming the scope towards Orion Nebula.

I took about 15 images of 20 seconds (and 15 darks too). The long focal lenght could only get the trapezium in frame and deepsky stacker didn't want to stack because there were too few stars. So I stacked all lights seperately with the darks (the DBK had a very strong amp glow I think it's called), and then stacked all resulting images with Registax

Any tips to improve deepsky with my planetary setup would be very welcome

(second image is the same but upped the gamma a lot in registax)

Cheers Jeffrey

[Craig20264]

Nothing embarrassing about having a go. I know absolutely the bare minimum about astro work, all my photography was done in daylight with a completely manual Pentax K100 SLR, but one thing I do know, you only improve with practice, and i'm sure someone will be along with the info you're looking for .

Keep at it:)

[Quatermass]

Did you take the shots with a camera or webcam? and does your set up have RA and Dec tracking?

[NickK]

That's an exceptional first image - you have the four main stars and the next (E & F, mag 10ish) nice and clear too!

Good stuff

Edit: actually - if you look carefully you can see the mag 15 stars too!

[Daniel-K]

try a focal reducer

[samir_ansari]

I actually really like your images, it's quite unusual to see the beauty that portion of M42 holds up close.

[gdheib0430]

Combining those two to show the bright clouds and the clear trap would look really nice.

[Ringrocket]

Thanks for the positive response !

Yes it was taken with a webcam-like camera: a DBK21-618 from the imaging source (a planetary camera). I recorded BMPs.

I have a focal reducer which I will try too. To make use of the long focal lenght I'll also look for smaller objects like planetary nebulae. However, I understood that those are much fainter than M42 ?

Cheers,

Jeffrey

[Darth Takahashi]

If you have a DSLR try putting that on the back of the scop instead. It the chip sizes that's bringing you too much magnification. Otherwise it's OK and focusing is a huge part in getting good images.

[Ringrocket]

Thanks Neil,

I don't have a DSLR

That's why I want to experiment a bit more with the DBK......

I focus with a Bahtinov mask which works quit well I think...

Cheers,

Jeffrey