First successful nebular Orion

[Aussie Dave]

Finally after a few nights of trying to get a successful setup alignment on the Celestron Nexstar 8i, it did play the game tonight although briefly, it took many alignments.

This is my first successful Nebular capture with a Nikon D3100, ISO3200, 30 seconds, single shot unprocessed.

I took many 10, 20 and 30 second shots with most of them being deleted. The scope seems to have a mind of it's own with varying drift and some runaway.

[zedds]

Nice one. Well done!!

[xtreemchaos]

lovely shot Dave, you can see the trapezion nice, them four central stars are what makes the base for a good o-neb. well done thanks for sharing charl.

[Aussie Dave]

Cheers Andy and Charl. It's taken a long time just to get that shot.

Charl 1 of my 10 second shots clearly seperates the 4 stars in the Trapezion which I'm very pleased with but not much neb showing on it. I only have 1 of each 10, 20 and 30 second shots that are worthy of keeping really with the 20 second shot having slight oval shaped stars.

Will try processing the 3 best shots soon I guess and see what it spits out.

[Aussie Dave]

RS6 and AS!2 can't align 3 images, so I had to manually edited in Paint.NET again.

Final single shot, managed to bring out more of M42 neb but blowing out the Trapezium.

[laudropb]

Very nice image. Well on your way to success imaging.

[Aussie Dave]

Final 3 images, 2 x 10sec, 1 x 30sec. Had to manually edit 3 of my best images in Paint. My 2 x 10sec shots were aligned quite well but the 30 sec shot was way out and I don't remember knocking my camera orit sliding around. I always make sure all screws are reasoanbly tight.

I'm not sure which image is better, the single 30 sec shot or the 3 stacked. I wasn't sure which opacity or layer filter to use either so just adjusted it to please my eye's on this PC. I think I've brought out more neb without blowing the center out but the 30 sec image layer isn't quite aligned, I just couldn't get it right across the whole picture mainly noticeable in the bottom left hand corner stars, not sure what happened to that shot. More practice is needed in all areas of my work I'd say.