What to image as a start.

[Cloengaa]

SO this friday I will get my setup I bought from FLO.

SW Explorer 200P DS on a NEQ6 Pro mount

ST80 Guidescope (will use my SPC 900 Cam for guiding)

I allready have my Canon EOS 1100D SLR unmodded.

So I am looking at what DSO would be easiest and fun to begin with imaging.

Any suggestions ?

[Kai]

Orion Nebula at this time of year i would suggest.

[Digz]

Orion Nebula at this time of year i would suggest.

Ditto that! Easy to find and shoot, you can quickly get some reasonable results that will spur you along the dark path....

[Gina]

Yes, that's what I tried first. Wish the dreaded clouds would go away and give me another chance (or two)

[Sam]

I agree with having the first shot a the Orion Nebula. It's nice and bright and you can get an encouraging result without too much effort. It's a very forgiving object for some of the common problems when first starting out with imaging.

[Cloengaa]

So Orion Nebula it is....Am I correct when saying that putting an OIII filter in front of my DSLR will not accomplish anything ?

[Luke]

I would just shoot it without the filter if your light pollution is not really bad.

With the long exposure times of the DSLR you should get the nebulosity fine and the filter would be blocking out some of the pretty colours from the nebula, complicating getting a nice natural colour image when you process it.

The colour is not so much of an issue with visual where you can't see much colour anyway, I guess.

It might be fun to try the filter sometime later though and see what happens, especially if you have bad light pollution or the moon is out and about.

So Orion Nebula it is....Am I correct when saying that putting an OIII filter in front of my DSLR will not accomplish anything ?

[Uranium235]

Yep, Orion is a good start. Careful not to expose for too long though as you can burn it out quite easily. You may end up doing a separate run of 60s exposures to resolve the core of the nebula, but lets not over-complicate things (yet)

Other easy targets would be globular clusters (especially if the seeing is poor).

[nmoushon]

Orion is a great object! You'll be very please at your results. Doesn't take much to get a lot of data for it.

Since your in the area I would suggest a go at the Flame Nebula and Rosetta Nebula. Both are relatively close by and though they are much fainter than Orion you can easily capture both by stacking even just 10 or so 1-2min exposures. Its even more exciting to capture something your not quite expecting to capture!

If you want so really easy and bright objects open and globular clusters are a sure hit! And are very beautiful to capture as well!