"E" and "F" in the Trapezium

[Luna-tic]

First, I'd like to say that I'm in wet diapers as far as imaging goes, just making a few baby steps. Tonight was clear and not as freezing cold as has been recently, so I took the kit into the barnyard where I have a fairly decent sky. I just added Bob's Knobs to my Edge HD 8", and had done an indoor collimation; I wanted to fine tune it outside as one goal of observing tonight. Another goal was trying out my new WO GT81 on the Moon, I haven't had the opportunity to use it for lunar because of recent weather.....and no Moon.

So, one of the last things tonight was to swing over to M42 after the Moon got too low to observe. I used the frac to observe wide-field for a while, then put the Edge on the mount; to check collimation I swung over to Castor, and clearly split it with a 25mm Plossl. Then I went to Capella, defocused so I could get the 'donut', and it was so perfect as I closed it down while focusing I left the collimation as it was. Skewing over to M42, I started with a 25mm Plossl in a 2" diagonal and worked my way up, ending with my 2" 2.5x Luminos barlow and a 13mm Ultima EP, giving me  385X. Visually, I could split 'E' and 'F' in the Trapezium, so I thought I'd see if I could get an image through the EP with my DSLR, since the Ultima is threaded for a T-ring. This is a single image, 2.5 seconds at ISO 6400. Less exposure did not bring out 'E' any better, and 'F' is showing as a bulge in its companion. More exposure hid both as the Trapezium stars were too bright.

[orion25]

Nice Trapezium. I took some shots a few years ago and struggled with "E" and "F". Good job!

Reggie

[MikeODay]

Very nice - thanks for sharing.

[MarsG76]

Yeah, E and F are not easy targets... Nice one.

[mikeDnight]

Brilliant! Your image will be of great interest to anyone needing to know the relative positions of the E & F stars. In my scope I can detect E easily but F, although being the brighter of the two, is a bit more trouble as it sits on the first diffraction ring and can get lost in the scintillation if the seeing isn't good. 

[GavStar]

Nice - When orion is up I always have a look to see if I can find E and F, gives me an indication of how good the seeing is 

[Luna-tic]

5 hours ago, GavStar said:

Nice - When orion is up I always have a look to see if I can find E and F, gives me an indication of how good the seeing is 

This is the first time I've seen them in my scopes. Seeing was much better than usual around here, but there was still a lot of "shimmer" in the atmosphere. I tried imaging the Moon with both the frac and SCT, but low power in the frac was all that would give me acceptable images. Everything else looked out of focus from the atmospheric movement, even when it was sharply in focus through the EP. I can generally split most of the more common doubles, Castor is usually my 'barometer' of how good the sky is; if I can get a clean split I know it's a good night.

[ollypenrice]

Good going. This image is a great representation of how they often look at the EP in our 14 inch Meade. I suspect an Ha filter would make the split easier for a camera though I haven't really tried.

Olly

[Luna-tic]

22 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

. I suspect an Ha filter would make the split easier for a camera .

Olly

Next clear night I'll give it a try, thanks for the suggestion.