Orion widefield (no tracker)

[abhoriel]

It seems you get loads of these Orion widefields.. sorry! and apologies again for the poor attempt, I had pretty basic equipment. I'm also a bit of a beginner, and have previously been trying my luck with DSOs using telephoto lenses. I haven't produced any recently as I'm trying to get guiding working. I think I have some serious differential flexure issues that need sorting..

 

Anyway, capitalising on the massively reduced light pollution from where I am currently (Dartmoor, Moretonhampstead), I thought I’d take some shots. I have no mount or tracker with me, and this was taken with a DSLR, fast lens and an £8 minitripod that I got on amazon.

 

Equipment:

Minitripod

Nikon D5100 DSLR (unmodded) @ ISO 3200

Nikkor 50mm 1.8g prime lens (@ f/1.8)

Intervalometer

 

Acquisition:

lights 142x6s (probably in reality 5s, as approx. 1s was used by mirror delay)

darks 84

flats 88

 

Processing:

Deepskystacker

Photoshop

-> levels + curves a few times

-> duplicate image

-> filter->noise->dust&scratches (I set radius to something like 400)

-> go back to original image. apply image (source: duplicate image, method: subtraction, threshold: 30)

-> crop

-> more levels + curves

 

I was tempted to use the median filter to reduce the noise, but decided against it in the end. I pushed this very limited data quite hard as I was curious to see what could be had with such short subs. I was quite surprised to see the horse head nebula and traces of Barnard’s loop. When cropping, I thought i'd leave Betelgeuse, despite it approaching the edge of the frame (lots of stacking artefact + lens aberrations from using the lens wide open)

 

[Radman40]

Brill....lots of work in that. It goes to show what can be done without spending a load of money on fancy equipment.

[wimvb]

No need to apologize for this image; it's a very fine one. With your limited setup you managed very well. Barnards loop is visible as well as dark dust/nebulae.

Is your camera modded?

 

Thanks for sharing

[abhoriel]

Thanks a lot for the replies! Unmodded camera. I think modded would help a lot with these low exposure times

[wimvb]

27 minutes ago, abhoriel said:

Thanks a lot for the replies! Unmodded camera. I think modded would help a lot with these low exposure times

Yes, but where's the challenge in that? I'm always impressed with what can be done with a simple setup.

[laudropb]

Very nice wide field image.

[wxsatuser]

6 hours ago, abhoriel said:

Thanks a lot for the replies! Unmodded camera. I think modded would help a lot with these low exposure times

Pretty good for very short exposures, this is a fanastic region that is full dust and nebulae.

Your unmodded Nikon seems to see quite a bit of the red.
Modding it would just make everything that much redder, fine if you want that but
in reality thats not how these objects really look, the extra red drowns out a lot of the other colours.

[bogdog]

cracking image for the simple setup you have well done

[abhoriel]

7 hours ago, wxsatuser said:

Pretty good for very short exposures, this is a fanastic region that is full dust and nebulae.

Your unmodded Nikon seems to see quite a bit of the red.
Modding it would just make everything that much redder, fine if you want that but
in reality thats not how these objects really look, the extra red drowns out a lot of the other colours.

Yeah I looked into getting my DSLR modded. It seems to really bring to life some objects like the north America nebula. Others seem to become red/pink without much else!