Animated Trapezium

[Martin Meredith]

As my first foray into CMOS (inveterate late adopter here), this is a live animated gif of the Trapezium stars from last night in pretty unsteady seeing. This is a sequence of 30 frames of 50 ms exposure, gamma-stretched, with no alignment. The 'E' star and perhaps 'F' (see https://www.maas.museum/observations/2010/02/23/harry-zooms-in-on-the-trapezium-the-heart-of-the-great-nebula-in-orion/ for details) might just be popping in and out occasionally. It will be interesting to repeat this on nights with less atmospheric disturbance. Ths is perhaps the closest I've got to an eyepiece view using EEVA techniques.

ASI 290MM, gain 110, bin 2

Martin

 

[Mike JW]

Hi Martin,

Yes possibly E and F popping in and out. As to closest you've got to the equivalent view in an eyepiece - uhmmmmmm, nowhere near to the real thing. The direct view in a large Dob on a steady night is a delight, with the 4 stars (and E and F) as diamonds in a 3D effect of M42 filling the whole eyepiece.

Below is the best I have ever achieved using the EEVA technique - still poor compared to the direct view.

I shall look forward to see just how good you can get the Trapezium.

Mike

[Martin Meredith]

I expressed myself badly: I don't mean this is 'as good as' an eyepiece view (clearly it isn't!) -- I mean that on an equivalent poor night of seeing this feels equivalently 'live'

[Mike JW]

I see where you are coming from. Made me ponder as whether it is worth ago at 1sec or less - not sure my laptop would cope with stacking at that rate.

Have fun

Mike

[saac]

Martin that is a great capture, good to see what EEVA can achieve. That would be particularly good on a public outreach event.  Thanks for sharing it . 

Jim 

[Martin Meredith]

Things were somewhat steadier this evening. This is live-combined RGB (no L as I didn't want to blow things out), roughly 36 x 500ms subs in each filter.  E and F are now more easily seen. I'd like to get the proplyds (G to I in the link I posted) but I'd need much better seeing (once or twice a year here). I used region of interest to select the central third of the sensor and also used equal aspect ratio to square things off. In all this made the individual subs (about 0.5M each) very manageable in terms of reading/stacking. 

Edited January 14, 2022 by Martin Meredith

[Mike JW]

Hi Martin, definite improvement. Never did see the G-I stars visually in the 20". Need very steady skies and very dark skies, so I will fascinated to see if your set up could achieve it.

Mike