First post here. This is my first attempt at capturing the Orion Nebula with my DSLR and tracker.

[AJeazy]

Hey, I'm new here. I love astrophotography but up until tonight, my astrophotography consisted of attaching my smartphone camera to my telescope's eyepiece for 3-5 second exposures. I got a nice bonus this Christmas and spent it on a tracker and this is my first attempt at imaging something using that setup. Of course with the help of some YouTube videos. I've included the one I took with my smartphone for comparison.

 

[scotty38]

Nicely done!

[carastro]

Presume the 2nd one was done with your tracker.   Why the different field of view?

Always helpful to post up equipment used and length of exposures with images.   
 

Carole

Edited December 13, 2022 by carastro

[AJeazy]

2 hours ago, carastro said:

Presume the 2nd one was done with your tracker.   Why the different field of view?

Always helpful to post up equipment used and length of exposures with images.   
 

Carole

Different camera. 1st was smartphone. 2nd was DSLR. It was a Canon EOS Rebel T7. 

[AstroMuni]

6 hours ago, AJeazy said:

I got a nice bonus this Christmas and spent it on a tracker and this is my first attempt at imaging something using that setup.

Nice shot and a great one for a first attempt. My only suggestion would be to reduce the black point so you can see the cloudy nebula around. What software did you use to process the image?

[Elp]

As you can tell it's a night and day difference, an excellent attempt. Is that a single photo or did you stack?

[AJeazy]

2 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

Nice shot and a great one for a first attempt. My only suggestion would be to reduce the black point so you can see the cloudy nebula around. What software did you use to process the image?

Thanks for the advice. I used deepskystacker and Gimp and then just tried to follow youtube tutorials on how to use both programs. 

[AJeazy]

8 minutes ago, Elp said:

As you can tell it's a night and day difference, an excellent attempt. Is that a single photo or did you stack?

I did 100 photos with 30 second exposures stacked. ISO of 1600. Used Bias, dark, and flat frames as well. 

[AstroMuni]

18 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

Nice shot and a great one for a first attempt. My only suggestion would be to reduce the black point so you can see the cloudy nebula around. What software did you use to process the image?

I have deliberately accentuated the nebulous areas that can be seen in your image, so if you gradually stretch the original image then you should be able to get a lot more detail out that is not stark like what I have done but more soft and natural. You can clearly see the running man nebula too. I used a software called Siril (tutorials are here https://siril.org/tutorials/). Good luck.

 

Edited December 13, 2022 by AstroMuni

[Elp]

5 minutes ago, AJeazy said:

I did 100 photos with 30 second exposures stacked. ISO of 1600. Used Bias, dark, and flat frames as well. 

There's definitely more nebulosity in there then. Orion shows up pretty well with a DSLR at 5-10s.

[AJeazy]

On 13/12/2022 at 10:30, AstroMuni said:

I have deliberately accentuated the nebulous areas that can be seen in your image, so if you gradually stretch the original image then you should be able to get a lot more detail out that is not stark like what I have done but more soft and natural. You can clearly see the running man nebula too. I used a software called Siril (tutorials are here https://siril.org/tutorials/). Good luck.

 

Hey, Its been a little bit but I redid my image and this is what I came up with. I do like it more and the colors look more correct. 

[AstroMuni]

4 hours ago, AJeazy said:

Hey, Its been a little bit but I redid my image and this is what I came up with. I do like it more and the colors look more correct.

Thats looking a lot better. 👍 What did you do different this time?

EDIT: Its actually looking great viewing on a laptop screen instead of phone 🙂 

Edited January 10, 2023 by AstroMuni

[powerlord]

awesome first pic - you should be proud of that.