Limits of Orion- Untracked DSLR

[OptymsticAlpaca]

I decided to try astrophotography beyond holding a  phone to the eyepiece! 

Just a canon 700D on a wobbly tripod but it works surprisingly well. I decided to go for the Orion Nebula in the clear weather last night and ended up with 600 lights and about a hundred calibration frames total. I used Siril to stack and do some processing and then moved into GIMP. Obviously this setup will not grant incredible views but I suspect the weakest link is my processing!

This is what came out of Siril with colour  calibration and green noise removal.

r_bkg_pp_lights_stacked.tif

This is my result from GIMP

r_bkg_pp_lights_stacked.tif

Just wondering if anyone has any tips for a better image?

Or any other easy unguided dslr objects for this time of year?

 

(sorry if images aren't accessible, I'm not great with adding media!)

Thanks,

Owen

[Crackabarrel]

Looks good, nicely done.

Have a look into the NPF rule to determine how long you can expose for with out trails, it is a stricter version of the more commonly used "Rule of 500".

You can reduce the effects of coma by stopping down the aperture.

M31 - Andromeda might be a good target to move on to, large and bright enough it will show up in a single sub.

[Oldfort]

I have tried to do the same, but with fewer lights.  I'd say you have a good result.  I can't really comment on the processing as I am a novice in that field.

[OptymsticAlpaca]

On 27/01/2022 at 13:04, Crackabarrel said:

Looks good, nicely done.

Have a look into the NPF rule to determine how long you can expose for with out trails, it is a stricter version of the more commonly used "Rule of 500".

You can reduce the effects of coma by stopping down the aperture.

M31 - Andromeda might be a good target to move on to, large and bright enough it will show up in a single sub.

Thanks, Andromeda was on my list!

I've heard of NPF but haven't used it yet, will try next time.

New 8 inch dob should be arriving soon, after more than a year! Very excited and hoping to get another try on Orion, more light but obviously shorter exposures for no trailing. The massive issue I have had is that my 256G computer ran out of storage because of the number of files Siril creates as by-products. These intermediate files are all deleted afterwards but with 600 RAW images all making different versions for R,G,B and preprocessed versions it does get out of hand. If anyone could think of a solution not involving star tracking (I would like to but ) I think would not be so afraid to try something similar again. 

Thanks,

Owen

[vlaiv]

This is a bit of data manipulation in ImageJ (binning, background removal) and then simple stretch in Gimp.

[Elp]

M45 pleiades? You might struggle to get the nebulosity though at short subs, I tried 10s, the nebulosity is there but it's extremely faint (you can see it clearly when completely maxing out the contrast (ie not a usable image setting)).

[OptymsticAlpaca]

5 minutes ago, Elp said:

M45 pleiades? You might struggle to get the nebulosity though at short subs, I tried 10s, the nebulosity is there but it's extremely faint (you can see it clearly when completely maxing out the contrast (ie not a usable image setting)).

 I have tried them but with not much success, my exposures for Orion were 2s if I remember right. Might give it another go at some point though.

[Elp]

It's a bit difficult without some form of star tracker, m42 is one of those wow objects whereby you can take a very short exp photo and it stares at you in the face as you're marvelling at the LCD screen. What you've achieved is very good.