Orion widefield

[Stub Mandrel]

I finally got round to processing my data from 7 March. I had an awful time, everything from obvious LP and failure to completely eliminate coma and other woes. Out of 200 subs, the last 75 had wisps of cloud an then bits of tree appearing! I also lost a couple to plane trails. Only 15 seconds per sub because of the LP so my plan to spot Barnard's Loop failed.

Still, at least it has the main nebulas showing and LOTS of stars.

Third try I will stop down even further and relocate to the Peak District!

Anyway, here it is.

[todd8137]

Hi Niel great image you caught most of the main targets within this image you must be please 

pat

[happy-kat]

Can see the HH in there and many many tight stars. Great image.

Was that a 50mm lens?

[Stub Mandrel]

Helios 58mm, the old standard lens for Russian Zenith cameras

It does suffer bad coma - I tried Steve's 'star rounder' on poor Betelgeuse. I think I muted the colour too much - the nebulas were quite colourful - and as a result I think I bleached out the stars.

This was my second go and stopped down two stops the coma was less.

My first go was at a darker site but with the lens wide open, coma was terrible but i was able to use the same exposure time so I got a trace of Barnard's loop.

I will try the Peak District next time, stop down even more and take different length subs to try and get the faint bits and the brighter stars.

Edit - I might make a round mask to reduce the coma and avoid the hexagonal bright stars.

[laudropb]

Very nice widefield image.

[happy-kat]

I have a Helios 135mm lens made for Dixons arround 1980, it suffers terrible chromatic aberation on star use, so stop it down to f8 or so from memory which then eats the stars caught but I might give it another go as your image is good..

[Stub Mandrel]

I have a Zeiss 135mm f3.5 Sonnar, and it's awesome this is a shot taken with it wide open in early December. It's worth looking for them on Ebay, although they fetch silly prices, luckily I bought mine some time around 1983 second-hand and quite cheap :-)