First light, M45

[Phillyo]

Having stopped about 5 years ago, I decided I missed astrophotography (remind me why!?). Many teething issues with kit not talking (ASIair Pro) and whatnot but I finally managed to get out last night and get about 300 x 60s exposures on M45. As I'm using an Astrotrac at the moment I'm limited to about 2hours or shooting before it has to rewind. Trying to reframe the shot again to get it close to the first 2 hours is pretty much impossible, so I had to crop it a bit to get rid of the edges.

Anyway, kit was ASI533 with Samyang 135/2 @f2.8. Mounted on the Astrotrac and captured with the ASIair Pro. Processed in Pixinsight (that was a cold sharp remind of what I'd forgotten too). It's not incredible, but I'm happy with it as a first image back. Lots of room to improve though! Next upgrade will be a goto mount lol. AZ-GTi maybe?

Thanks,

Phil. 

[geeklee]

Great wide field shot Phil.  It must have all come flooding back with a challenging capture and then opening PixInsight again!! Great work on both fronts.

[astro mick]

Very nice.

[Phillyo]

Thank you both. Looking forward to adding a lot more data to this to try and find the faint stuff!

Phil

[tooth_dr]

Really really nicely done and framed!

[johngm]

Very nice detail there Phil, and welcome back 👍

[Crackabarrel]

Very nice, a strong return to the photography side of things

[bottletopburly]

Nice image indeed well done 👍 

[Phillyo]

Thank you all.

[ollypenrice]

Wow, when I saw this image I didn't think, 'portable setup, camera lens.' Not at all!

Very impressive!

Olly

[Phillyo]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Wow, when I saw this image I didn't think, 'portable setup, camera lens.' Not at all!

Very impressive!

Olly

Thanks Olly! Having lost hours of time trying to get accurate alignment and even finding my target I decided to upgrade the mount at the weekend so I now have a belt modded HEQ5 Pro. Hopefully this will mean more time capturing photons and less time sitting on a cold floor trying to align the astrotrac.

It's a great little mount, but it is limited!

Phil

[messier 111]

sublim .