30 minutes of the Orion Nebula, (Skywatcher 72ED + Canon 7D)

[FaB-Bo-Peep]

It must be about 5 months since I last managed a telescope session , (the clouds have been relentless), but the other night I managed a quick session and thankfully all the equipment worked without a hitch. This is around 30 minutes of data of the Orion Nebula with the smaller Running Man Nebula just above it. I cannot get a good view of this from my back garden so moved into the front, unfortunately in doing so I left behind the old style streetlight that has plagued me over the years, (but my filter copes very well with), only to find myself trying to shoot in the direction of a newer LED streetlight, (which my filter does not cope so well with). I would normally sit in the warm controlling everything from my tablet but found myself standing beside my telescope, shielding it from the light, (it was very cold to be standing still, oh what a hobby!). 

I've undoubtedly overdone the colours in this one but I'm a firm believer that there is no right or wrong as 99% of it is down to artistic licence and I do like colourful images.  Capturing the data is tricky but so is processing it and as I tend to muddle through with very limited knowledge, it's very hard to know when enough is enough in terms of tweaking.

Anyway, given the short total exposure time and the fact that my filter is of limited use against LED lights, I'm still fairly pleased with the end result but would really like to try this again from a darker location.

Imaging scope: Skywatcher 72ED.
Imaging camera: Canon 7D.
Guide scope, Skywatcher 50mm finder scope.
Guide camera: ZWO ASI 120MC-S.
Mount: Skywatcher AZ-GTI.
Filter: Optolong LPRO.

OVL Field Flattener.

All controlled from an ASI AIR PRO.
Images stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in StarTools and Gimp.

Edited January 7, 2022 by FaB-Bo-Peep

[shropshire lad]

I think you have done quite well ... can I ask how many stacked images .. what shutter length and iso.

 

[FaB-Bo-Peep]

Thanks and you can indeed, I experimented with the exposure length at the beginning of the session and settled on 120 seconds so by far the majority were that, however I chucked everything into Deep Sky Stacker, (probably not the best idea but it appears to work), so there was a few 30 secs, 60 secs, 90 secs and even a single 180 secs thrown into the mix.  Deep Sky Stacker ended up rejecting some of course but based on what I had thrown in the total exposure time would have been around 30 minutes.  ISO was 1600.

[nephilim]

15 minutes ago, FaB-Bo-Peep said:

Thanks and you can indeed, I experimented with the exposure length at the beginning of the session and settled on 120 seconds so by far the majority were that, however I chucked everything into Deep Sky Stacker, (probably not the best idea but it appears to work), so there was a few 30 secs, 60 secs, 90 secs and even a single 180 secs thrown into the mix.  Deep Sky Stacker ended up rejecting some of course but based on what I had thrown in the total exposure time would have been around 30 minutes.  ISO was 1600.

Thats a good start for 60 seconds. Just a bit of advice here from a fellow newbie. For M42 its worth doing what you did, as in 2 or 3 sets of different length exposures. Calibrate etc each set separately so you end up with 2 or 3 master light frames. Then follow this tutorial. Orion needs very short exposures for the core otherwise its easy to over expose which you've done slightly here. It also needs longer exposures to bring out the nebulosity. Processing is at least 50% of this hobby & its a steep learning curve, hopefully this video will help you pick up some new techniques.  

Steve