First DSLR photo: Trapezium, Orion Nebula

[Astroegg]

A poignant reminder of Henry Draper's 1880 photograph of the Orion Nebula, the first ever taken, I have taken my first picture of the Trapezium asterism in the Orion nebula...

I took this picture using a DSLR attached to my telescope (prime focus) and have achieved my first ever colour photograph in a quick 30 second exposure. The novelty may wear off soon but it has a big WOW factor for me at the moment! First time I have ever produced something that isn't just white pixels. I suffered some ice on the corrector plate and probably on all the other optics which affected things a fair bit, but am now seeing a dangerous attraction to astrophotography about to flourish!

I've not done anything to the photo apart from resize the picture from the original 5.5Mb RAW file to a more reasonable 300K JPEG and flipped it horizontally. Hope you like it and thank you for looking.

Photo details:

Telescope: Celestron CPC 1100

Eyepiece: Baader Hyperion Zoom Mk III 8-24mm

Camera: Nikon D40, prime focus setup (ISO: 1600, Exposure: 30secs)

[JimStan]

Isn't that amazing ? You can see the colors in the nebula, even with that short an exposure! I bet if you learn curves, etc. in processing, you will find even more data in that picture . ( I can almost bet that there is some there ! )

Jim

[Dubbs75]

Very nice image. Thats very similar to what I have taken. Whenever I stack them in DSS I lose all the colour - go figure!?

[Astroegg]

Very nice image. Thats very similar to what I have taken. Whenever I stack them in DSS I lose all the colour - go figure!?

Wierd! My next option was to take several photos and try and stack them but if the colour is lost then it would achieve the opposite intended - I would want to get more colour and detail out of the stacking.

[MartinB]

Excellent!! Thanks for the link to Harry's photo as well. We all owe him a debt...quite a few thousand pounds in my case

We all remember the excitement of our first astro images and this brought it all back. Look for the first images thread at the top of this board and make sure you post this one.

[mallorcasaint]

Very nice image. Thats very similar to what I have taken. Whenever I stack them in DSS I lose all the colour - go figure!?

Youn will probably find that you have not lost the colour at all. When you stack in DSS the resulting image can look grey but put it into Photoshop and adjust curves and levels and watch it come out!!

[Zul]

Nice.

[SJJ]

Nice one, you can even make out a companion star of one of the trapezium stars.

[Astroegg]

Nice one, you can even make out a companion star of one of the trapezium stars.

Indeed, and I sometimes worry my CPC1100 is badly collimated! (I read however that a 4 inch scope could resolve the trapezium so I won't get carried away just yet)