Orion's Belt and Sword with the Esprit 80 and Canon 6D

[alexbb]

Recently I bought a Canon 6D for daytime photography. Of course I was going to put it one day behind a telescope.

Said and done. Last weekend I went to my girlfriend's parents' village (Clear Outside estimates an SQM of 21.9 there), I put the Canon 6D behind the Esprit 80 and both of them on top of the tuned AZ-EQ5. Guiding was done with a finder guider and overall stayed at 1.5"-1.8" RMS. But the 6D has large pixels and I also downsampled the final image so there shouldn't be much loss due to poor tracking.

Moon was rising just before 11 so I started early, shooting Orion as the first panel. 2 other higher panels followed, consisting of 21, 21 and 19 subs, 5 mins exposures at ISO1600. For the Orion's core I used also 12x5s. That's a total of 3 hours.

The stars towards the corners are not perfect with the Esprit80 and a full frame sensor, but resampling at 60%, I do not notice any weird shapes.

Can't wait to shoot a wide Antares region with this setup.

On astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/393580/

Clear skies!

Alex

Edited March 2, 2019 by alexbb

[Ruud]

A wonderful image and very complete!

[alexbb]

8 minutes ago, Ruud said:

A wonderful image and very complete!

Thank you, Ruud!

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Fantastic image, so much detail in there it is hard to know where to look first. 

Steve

[Chris]

Really well done! One of the best I've seen over the years!

[dannybgoode]

Really nice. I can’t wsit until late autumn for Orion to be back at his best - hopefully will have got a lot more hours of imaging under my belt then and will have a go at a nice widefield like this. 

Even if it is only half as good as yours I’ll be happy

[Z3roCool]

Very nice image. Loving widefield at the moment ?

[john2y]

That is beautiful, I'm saving up for secondhand 6D and images like these just make me want it even more ?

[Scooot]

Wow that’s a cracker.  

[gorann]

Really nice image Alex! Could be taken for a mosaic. You may consider getting a Ha clip on filter for that camera to add HA to your RGB images during moon lit nights.

[geoflewis]

A superb image Alex.

Geof

[alexbb]

Thank you all so much!

[alexbb]

As usual, more colour

[alexbb]

Or stretched more, but resolution lowered.

[Astroscot2]

Excellent image Alex and nicely processed too .  Can I ask what intervalometer you used for taking your frames ?  Ive also recently purchased a 6d and fancy attaching it to the scope or a few lenses.

Kind regards

Mark

[alexbb]

1 minute ago, Astroscot2 said:

Excellent image Alex and nicely processed too .  Can I ask what intervalometer you used for taking your frames ?  Ive also recently purchased a 6d and fancy attaching it to the scope or a few lenses.

Kind regards

Mark

Thank you, Mark!

My mount performs poorly and I can't take more than a few seconds unguided shots without trailing. I used a laptop for guiding and also for exposures control.

[AbsolutelyN]

Absolutely stunning image Alex. Is the 6d is modded in any way? As old as the 6d is I'm half tempted to pick one up for travel as seems more HA sensitive than my Sony a7r3.

[Datalord]

On 05/03/2019 at 11:04, Astroscot2 said:

Can I ask what intervalometer you used for taking your frames ?

When I used my 6D, I bought a cheap one on Amazon. They are very simple and work well. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=intervalometer+canon+6d&crid=3L2SRCXPQYHPO&sprefix=intervalometer%2Caps%2C178&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_6_14

As you can tell from that search, they are essentially all the exact same, with different branding. Probably made in the same factory in China.

[alexbb]

27 minutes ago, AbsolutelyN said:

Absolutely stunning image Alex. Is the 6d is modded in any way? As old as the 6d is I'm half tempted to pick one up for travel as seems more HA sensitive than my Sony a7r3.

Thank you! I used an unmodded camera, but really good skies help a lot. There's a lot of dust in Orion though, not only Ha.

The last version with ~double the exposure time is this one:

[MarsG76]

Great looking Orions Sword and belt....

 

[Gina]

Very nice indeed.

[laser_jock99]

Very nice- the dark skies there help a lot!

[michael8554]

Is nobody going to mention the Horsehead........? 

Michael 

[Gina]

The Horsehead - there you are...  😁

[alexbb]

Thank you all! Can't wait for Orion to rise again, though I have plenty of other targets to shoot every time of the year.