Finally started imaging again, and now guided too!

[DanLXIX]

So 2 years after buying my guidescope, I finally got the chance to test it out on Friday night.

Having had everything boxed up for two years (for lots of reasons), I've had to spend the last couple of months re-learning things again, getting things working and discovering the difficulties of my new location. I re-shot the Orion nebula simply because it's an easy place to start a refresh. This is where I discovered some of my local challenges with light, which is really annoying when the sky is actually much darker here than it is back in Sheffield. Then it was finally time to try out the guidescope. It took me a while to get setup and working simply on the 'click go and see what happens' approach, and again I picked Pleiades as an easy target, but I was really happy to see a 4 minute exposure looking pretty good.

The output from these two nights are not technically good pictures and Pleiades wasn't even properly framed (a bit too low on the shot) because it was more about getting it working, but I'm just happy I'm back up and running again

Edited March 8, 2021 by DanLXIX
Typo

[johnst]

They are both really good images and I'm sure you'll get good feedback from more experienced members here. What scope and mount did you use btw.

[DanLXIX]

14 minutes ago, johnst said:

They are both really good images and I'm sure you'll get good feedback from more experienced members here. What scope and mount did you use btw.

Skywatcher 150P-DS on an EQ5 PRO. I've just updated my signature to include a few other bits I've got.

[PeterCPC]

You are clipping the black point and losing data as a result.

[DanLXIX]

7 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

You are clipping the black point and losing data as a result.

Good to know, thanks. I've totally forgotten the processing workflows so I know these aren't great.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

They are both actually great images and although no expert the background looks very black, most images are not usually so black, which I guess will be due to the clipped blackpoint as Peter has pointed out so the data is there but you will loose some of the feint stuff by doing this and so could be even better 🙂 

Steve

[dannybgoode]

They are nice images.  I can still remember the magic of seeing the first DSO's appear on my computer screen from data I had actually captured and my early attempts were not as good as these  .  I like your M47 in particular - some really nice detail to the nebulosity...

[DanLXIX]

As it's been cloudy, I thought I'd have another go at stacking the Orion Nebula pictures I took. I think this is looking a lot better than my previous attempt.