Let's see your 1st DSOs

[pixelsaurus]

My first serious attempt at astro back in 2007. It is Comet McNaught setting over the Awhitu Peninsula, Auckland,NZ. I was lucky to get this as it was the worst summer I can remember. Extremely wet. In the 6 odd weeks McNaught was visible, I only saw it on 6 occasions. This particular image has bugged me ever since. The original was shot at ISO 3200, 30 secs, Pentax DA 18-55mm at !8mm and f/3.5. Shot on a Pentax *ist DS. Image is very noisey and it is only recently that I have started to come to grips with it. I found some old darks and used IRIS to remove noise. I'm still not happy with this image but I do feel I'm getting betterer. I think the starfield behind the comet might be Columba but still waiting to Astrometry.net to give me an answer.

[Gina]

Good capture

[pixelsaurus]

Thanks Gina. The bright star above the fencepost and between it and the shed is Fomalhaut. Grus is standing on it's tail in the comet's tail, I should have known that as Grus is one of my favourite naked eye constellations.

[thommo10]

Here is the finished M45 processed in photoshop by spikey

[IainMcD]

Loving that comet shot!

I'm dying to get a bright comet! I think the one I remember from when I was a kid was Hale-Bopp.

[MarPi]

Hi everyone

This is my first astrophotography picture. If i remember this was in autumn 2010.

Setup: Canon 50D with Tamron 17-50 f 2.8 lens (38 min total exposure)

Martin

[Gina]

What a brilliant start! Well done

[MarPi]

Thank you Gina! Is nice to hear that.

[Scott]

my first attempt. canon 1100d on camera tripod 18mm-55mm lens set to 18mm. i think it was september this year. can't remember how many subs/darks. more a bunch of dso's than any particular one. i've still got a lot to learn about processing.

Scott

[ian_bird]

Scott - great image! How dark are your skies!

How did you get focus at 18mm? I struggle at 200mm!

[Scott]

hi ian and thanks. getting focus was just a matter of take a short sub, check it. repeat too mant times to remember until i was happy. As for the skies, I kinda cheated, I was in Australia at the time.

Scott

[Scott]

sorry, i think i've cheated. its the same night (i think) but a 2nd attempt at processing. this was the first attempt at processing

Scott

[mikehab]

My first ever Orion nebula taken tonight with a Canon EOS 60D with Samyang 500mm mirror lens. 11 x 5sec subs @ ISO 1600 + 5 darks. Not on a par with many of the images here - but it's my first and I'm chuffed to bits as it's first light with my new 500mm lens which I'm just playing around with to see whether it's any use for astro photography.

[Gina]

Good first shot There's more data in that image than is immediately apparent but get more data and you'll have a great image

Here's a quick stretch of the posted image using Photoshop - hope you find it useful

[WaveSoarer]

After doing a little bit of planetary imaging using my modified xbox webcam, I managed to get the appropriate T-ring fitting for my wife's Nikon SLR camera. We fitted this to the telescope via the 2x Barlow lens which, thanks to the clever SW design, screws straight on to the T-ring and doubles up as a nose piece for the 1.25" EP adaptor. The first image is a single, tracked, image of M42 (the Orion Nebula) and the second image is a stacked set of 9 exposures. Mrs WaveSoarer stacked them using the layer and alignment tools in photoshop. The nebula could have been better centred and the focusing isn't perfect either. Still not too bad for a first attempt at a DSO I suppose and you can even see some colour. The images were captured on the night of 21/11/12 and the quarter moon was still well above the horizon at the time

I actually quite like the single exposure image as the trapezium is visible and there is some wispy structure in the blue coloured dust clouds behind. When we're more adventurous we'll have an attempt at some dark frame corrections, at least, as there are some brighter areas to one edge of the CCD sensor. The T-ring can easily allow the camera to be used at prime focus and we'll have a go at wider field images when conditions allow. Our first attempts at M31 were mainly the core with the vaguest hints of the central parts of the dust clouds.

[Gina]

Very good start Nice

[Tom123]

Here's my first image of M33. I was feeling brave that night so this is my first time with 10mins subs - 3hrs in total. I feel it also really benefited just over an hour of darks. Two lessons learnt: get as much data as possible; darks really help with noise

[Gina]

That's great - particularly for a first attempt

[Mik3]

Thats a cracking, M33 lots of detail.

[Scott]

Here's my first image of M33. I was feeling brave that night so this is my first time with 10mins subs - 3hrs in total. I feel it also really benefited just over an hour of darks. Two lessons learnt: get as much data as possible; darks really help with noise

thats a brilliant first ever dso

[Ryan-y]

That is a great m33!

[Damian1985]

Here's my 1st attempt at Andromeda, single 30sec exposure and a bit of tweaking in Lightroom. Also made black and white as I felt it made the image better.

[stellawolf]

Very nice first attempt well done :)

[WaveSoarer]

Here is another attempt at M42 from the night of the 5th January. We used a Bahtinov mask to help with focusing and the camera was set on prime focus this time. We used 9 darks and 9 flats along with 19 (I think) 30 second subs in Deep Sky Stacker. We need longer exposures I expect to improve the histogram stretching and we also need ot learn how to get the colour balance correct during the histogram stretching.

The image could also have been better centred - the running man would also make it on to the same frame.

Edited January 7, 2013 by WaveSoarer

[Dan Leach]

My first DSO shots

Just single shots, about a minute or 2 exposure