Orion Nebula

[Jjmorris90]

Hi all. 
 

this is my first shot of the Orion Nebula. 
 

i think it’s ok. But could be better. 
 

i tried stacking but didn’t understand how to use it. And every image seemed to have some sort of blur. I don’t know if it would be a tracking issue or my slight tap on the camera screen to take the photo. 
 

 

I have attached two other photos of the ones I was going to use stacking with but they’re just ever so slightly blurred.  The exposure of each shot was around 3 seconds. Anything longer and they start to blur even more so

I’ve ordered the mask for the scope also. 

any advice appreciated. 

[Iem1]

It looks like wobble to me, most likely from touching the camera to take the shot, as you said.

An intervolemeter is a must if your camera does not have a built in timer function so you can let the rig settle after handling it before it starts imaging.

Get the wobble under control and you should be good to go...or at least able to identify other issues that may be at play (incorrect polar alignment etc)

what equipment are you using?

[Padraic M]

That's very good - I'd hate to show my first attempt at Orion! Probably wobble if you're touching the camera to take a shot. Given the angles you're dealing with, the tiniest of shakes will show. Eradicate that and you can start to think about polar alignment to get good tracking. You would like to be able to get 10-20s of exposure time before stars start to trail.

[Jjmorris90]

56 minutes ago, Iem1 said:

It looks like wobble to me, most likely from touching the camera to take the shot, as you said.

An intervolemeter is a must if your camera does not have a built in timer function so you can let the rig settle after handling it before it starts imaging.

Get the wobble under control and you should be good to go...or at least able to identify other issues that may be at play (incorrect polar alignment etc)

what equipment are you using?

I’m using a skywatcher explorer 200p and a canon 700d 

Should I have used a Barlow lens?

 

[Jjmorris90]

42 minutes ago, Padraic M said:

That's very good - I'd hate to show my first attempt at Orion! Probably wobble if you're touching the camera to take a shot. Given the angles you're dealing with, the tiniest of shakes will show. Eradicate that and you can start to think about polar alignment to get good tracking. You would like to be able to get 10-20s of exposure time before stars start to trail.

I did think so. Even though I’m only tapping the screen it’s probably still causing a shake.

[nephilim]

To me that looks as if your out of focus, a wobbly mount etc would look far worse than that. I'd look at getting a Bahtinov Mask, imo one of the most reliable ways to check focus. You dont want to be using a Barlow lens for imaging DSO's those are mainly for visual use or Planetary imaging. If you want to get in 'nearer' you can just crop the image during processing. Also your stars will start trailing after about 2 seconds with the focal length your imaging with. If I remember correctly the 200p has a focal length of 1000mm

Steve

 

Edited December 24, 2021 by nephilim

[rcwinter]

It looks like just star trails, possible wobble, for static camera exposures you need to apply the 500 rule , link below 

https://astrobackyard.com/the-500-rule/

that will help you gauge what you can and can’t do to avoid trailing,

nice effort , congrates 

Richard

[Jjmorris90]

11 hours ago, rcwinter said:

It looks like just star trails, possible wobble, for static camera exposures you need to apply the 500 rule , link below 

https://astrobackyard.com/the-500-rule/

that will help you gauge what you can and can’t do to avoid trailing,

nice effort , congrates 

Richard

Could anyone figure out what mine would be ? 
 

ive got a canon 700d 

skywatcher 200p explorer 

 

also if I get a tracking mount will it solve this issue ?

Edited December 24, 2021 by Jjmorris90

[Iem1]

3 minutes ago, Jjmorris90 said:

Could anyone figure out what mine would be ? 
 

ive got a canon 700d 

skywatcher 200p explorer 

 

also if I get a tracking mount will it solve this issue ?

If I remember correctly, in your case, it would be 500/1000 x 1.6 = 0.8 second exposures as an approximation to avoid star trail (assuming 1000 mm fl and crop sensor)

I could be wrong though, pulling from memory, so maybe wait for other input.

A tracking mount would help a lot and drastically improve possible exposure time, even unguided, but I have no experience with 1000 mm focal lengths or larger scopes so I'm not really in a position to give advice about mount options.

[irtuk]

Grab yourself a shutter release cable, that should deal with the wobble. don't bother with a Barlow, all that will do is increase magnification and crop the image. The Orion nebula will fill most of your frame there if you have enough exposure. Focus is only slightly off, to my eyes at least but a bahtinov mask will help you sort that out.

A tracking mount will, ok I am going to be honest based on my experience here, a tracking mount will drive you insane for a good few sessions until you get to grips with it. Once you have nailed down setting it up and aligning it it opens the door to the incredible images you can see on this board.

Orion is a bit of a special case because its so very bright and only needs "short" exposures. If you want to shoot stuff that requires exposures over 30 seconds, which is pretty much everything else in the sky, you will need to be tracking. Once you get over 60 seconds you also want to be looking at guided but don't worry about that for now.

Personally I would skip the mount upgrade path, i.e. adding the tracking motors, and head straight for something like the EQ5 SynScan mount.  

As for stacking, yes its a bit of a mystery to start with. My route through the various options started with Deep Sky Stacker, which is free and perfectly serviceable, then onto Astro Pixel Processor which isn't free for stacking, and PixInsight for post processing which also isn't free to quite an amazing degree. 

During daylight you can shoot a set of calibration files and reprocess your existing image, so if you are at a loose end today you can try that.  I cannot stress enough how important the calibration files are, that's the Darks, Flats, DarkFlats etc. each set does something very specific to remove noise from your image and increase Signal to Noise ratio.

Here's my first Orion, 2nd January 2017, the nebula is one of the out of focus blobs, the slightly pinker one.  Thats 16 sec at F1.4 ISO 400 on a Nikon D800E, 85mm lens.

 

Ed.

 

[Jjmorris90]

10 hours ago, irtuk said:

Grab yourself a shutter release cable, that should deal with the wobble. don't bother with a Barlow, all that will do is increase magnification and crop the image. The Orion nebula will fill most of your frame there if you have enough exposure. Focus is only slightly off, to my eyes at least but a bahtinov mask will help you sort that out.

A tracking mount will, ok I am going to be honest based on my experience here, a tracking mount will drive you insane for a good few sessions until you get to grips with it. Once you have nailed down setting it up and aligning it it opens the door to the incredible images you can see on this board.

Orion is a bit of a special case because its so very bright and only needs "short" exposures. If you want to shoot stuff that requires exposures over 30 seconds, which is pretty much everything else in the sky, you will need to be tracking. Once you get over 60 seconds you also want to be looking at guided but don't worry about that for now.

Personally I would skip the mount upgrade path, i.e. adding the tracking motors, and head straight for something like the EQ5 SynScan mount.  

As for stacking, yes its a bit of a mystery to start with. My route through the various options started with Deep Sky Stacker, which is free and perfectly serviceable, then onto Astro Pixel Processor which isn't free for stacking, and PixInsight for post processing which also isn't free to quite an amazing degree. 

During daylight you can shoot a set of calibration files and reprocess your existing image, so if you are at a loose end today you can try that.  I cannot stress enough how important the calibration files are, that's the Darks, Flats, DarkFlats etc. each set does something very specific to remove noise from your image and increase Signal to Noise ratio.

Here's my first Orion, 2nd January 2017, the nebula is one of the out of focus blobs, the slightly pinker one.  Thats 16 sec at F1.4 ISO 400 on a Nikon D800E, 85mm lens.

 

Ed.

 

Thank you! Ordered a bhav mask. Hopefully it will help.