M42 - First attempt with Autoguiding

[ejwwest]

I got an autoguiding system for Christmas and tonight was the first serious attempt to use it and started with an easy object: M42.

31 frames of 1 minute and 2 minutes (never managed to get much without trailing at 1 minute before) at mainly ISO 800 and some at 400. Darks and bias frames used. 37.5 minutes exposure time in total:

M42 - Great Orion Nebula by ejwwest, on Flickr

Stacked with DeepSkyStacker and then finished off in PSE. I'll probably play around with the exposure in the central part so it doesn't overexpose so much.

Here's the best attempt before with 30 second exposures:

M042 Orion Nebula by ejwwest, on Flickr

[SJJ]

Looks like the guiding is working well, you've picked out more colours and details.

[andyo]

Nice one the autoguiding seems to be working nicely,maybe worth trying some longer exposures

[ejwwest]

Nice one the autoguiding seems to be working nicely,maybe worth trying some longer exposures

Thanks. Yes. I thought I'd try it at 1-2 mins and then go for longer ones. It means I can reduce the ISO below 1600 and get better signal to noise. Will try 5 mins next time and then progress to more difficult objects where that really makes a big difference.

[Gina]

Nice start You need much shorter exposures for the core and yes you can try longer ones for the outer regions. Then stack separately and process and finally combine. This is a very difficult DSO to handle - it covers such a huge brightness range.

[astro mick]

Looks good to me,nice guiding.

[ejwwest]

Nice start You need much shorter exposures for the core and yes you can try longer ones for the outer regions. Then stack separately and process and finally combine. This is a very difficult DSO to handle - it covers such a huge brightness range.

The TIF that was output by DSS had a much better exposed core (though underexposed outer region that I enhanced with PSE). I layered the untreated TIF on top of the enhanced TIF and mixed until I thought it looked better. See what people think:

[Gina]

Yes, that's certainly a nice improvement