First "real" attempt at M42.

[guiseppe]

By "real" I mean that I was really serious about it, as with my other image of the Pleiades. This was taken during the same session. Words can't describe how happy I am to finally be getting these kinds of results. I took 110x15s lights (out of which 41 were stacked), 50 darks and 50 bias. Can't wait til I get my polarscope, so I can align properly and then hopefully get better results.

Please tell me what you think, and any help towards getting better results would be much appreciated.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/prr761kqepdrn1k/M42.jpg

[Alien 13]

That is an impressive start im sure the polarscope will get you longer subs its good to see another EQ3-2 imager out there.

Alan

[guiseppe]

That is an impressive start im sure the polarscope will get you longer subs its good to see another EQ3-2 imager out there.

Alan

Thankyou! The polarscope has arrived and been mounted, but I couldn't quite figure it out. Once I do, and the conditions allow, I will give this another try.

[Johnny666666]

Good luck with the polarscope - I fitted mine to the EQ3.2 mount and didn't fully understand it either! The first thing that confused me was there was already part of a polarscope mounting tube and setting scale already fitted to the EQ3.2 which I had to take out...

Check out this video from the Astronomy Shed, from about 7 minutes onwards. He uses a great technique for aligning the polarscope, far less complicated than the one I had tried before from Astro Baby. When I initially set up my polarscope during the day and rotated the RA axis so that polaris was at the bottom of the reticule, I used a permanent marker pen to mark a line across the joint of the mount - then when I go outside and after aligning the tripod roughly north and levelling it I fit the mount and simply unlock the RA axis and rotate it until the marks align and I know polaris is at the bottom of the reticule. I then lock the RA and turn the RA setting scale to zero.

Next I calculate the time FROM the last transit of polaris and simply unlock the RA axis and rotate it to show this time on the RA setting scale before locking it down again. For example, if polaris was last at transit at 5:00pm and the time I am setting up for observing is 11:00pm, I rotate the RA axis 6 hours. Once locked in this position I simply adjust the Alt and Dec thumbscrews to place polaris in its little circle in the polarscope in the usual manner. Done!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwJ9O0lFnQs

Hope this helps

[Langy]

That's a great image. When I do get the chance of some clear skies again and a visit to the local dark sky site I will be trying that. I'm sure with my cheap MD I should be able to get something similar to 15 seconds.

Well done, just goes to show how much you can capture with such short exposures and not the 5 minutes a lot of people can achieve.