M42 unguided Ha

[Magnus_e]

So as this season's first image, I have started on the Orion nebula.

I had guiding issues, but with my newly polar aligned observatory I could do 150sec exposures without issues.

1h 37min total.

6x 10 sec

18x 30sec

17x 60sec

28x 150sec

I think it's a good start to continue on. I have darks and biases for it, but they where taken after I processed. I'll save them for when I get more data.

Let me know what you think. It's been a long summer, so had to learn 'everything' again.

 

At lest I have polaralignment within 5 arcsec in both axies this year

[wimvb]

Good start of the season. I think that focus was off a bit. Do you use autofocus in Ekos?

[bobro]

Lots of detail in the first image of the season. There's a wide range of exposure : the darker nebulosity looks great though the brightest parts look a bit overexposed on my pc. How are the exposures combined?

[Magnus_e]

17 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Good start of the season. I think that focus was off a bit. Do you use autofocus in Ekos?

I remember there where some issues focusing. At first the autofocus was way off. Was happy just to get it working at all. Has been a long summer, so not easy to remember everything.

 

3 minutes ago, bobro said:

Lots of detail in the first image of the season. There's a wide range of exposure : the darker nebulosity looks great though the brightest parts look a bit overexposed on my pc. How are the exposures combined?

It might be a little on the bright side. I user the HDR tool in pixinsight to combine. If I get more data on this, i will try not to streach to much. My last orinon from three years back or so, did not have nearly this much detail at 2h 40min, so I'm happy to be progressing.

I actually got three images from last year posted in the norwegian magazine Astronomy. The November issue featured my monkey head nebula in SHO as a full page image on the back of the magazine   My server 'and webside' is down now, but I have the images from my observatory in this album.

 

[wimvb]

47 minutes ago, Magnus_e said:

I remember there where some issues focusing. At first the autofocus was way off. Was happy just to get it working at all. Has been a long summer, so not easy to remember everything.

What kind of focuser do you have? I found out that with my dc motor focuser, which has backlash, I get better and faster results when using the "polynomial" method rather than the "iterations" method for autofocusing. I always set the focus position to about where it should be, before starting the autofocus procedure.

50 minutes ago, Magnus_e said:

I actually got three images from last year posted in the norwegian magazine Astronomy.

Congratulations on that!

[Magnus_e]

The issue was that I was too far of focus. When this happends, then the autofocus starts to focus on the center of the star, and not the entire star. 

I also have some tilt in the system. So left side is more unfocused. 

I could try to make this a mosaic down to the flame. I have been wanting to try a mosaic for a while. It will make the stars smaller and easyer to fix?