M42 with new guiding set up.

[merlinxlm]

Hello everyone, here is my first attempt at the M42 with my new guiding set up. This picture is composed of two images layered together. They were taken with a standard Oly E510, one image was 5min and the second was 3min 40 sec both at iso 400. And saved in raw then adjusted and saved as jpg. Then layered and readjusted. I'll try and take more subs next time and some dark files. I must say that I'm very happy with the QHY5 guide cam and PHD they work very well together. Any comments or advice appreciated.

Thank you.

[adamsp123]

Hi Merlin, take as many subs as you can and stack the RAWs using free deepskystacker, save the result as a tiff file and manipulate that in a photo tool then save that as a jpeg, don't stack jpegs as they are compressed files so data is lost, RAWs have the "real" data.

[gary1968]

Despite the few subs that is a cracking image mate, next time, loads more subs. Thanks for sharing.

Gary

[Dave]

A great start there. Keep it up.

Dave

[merlinxlm]

Here is a single 7min exposure shot in Raw, ISO400. Adjusted levels and curves. Any comments or advice appreciated.

Thank you.

[adamsp123]

Well a cracking good picture at first try, which I really should have said in my first post, but I was a bit tired at the time and wanted to offer some advice.

With a start like that and getting a regime of taking subs and light and dark frames stacked in DSS which BTW is easy to use, it advises what settings to use, I believe it will get you some excellent images very quickly.

Getting a light pollution filter will help with the background colour caste, the Skywatcher is really quite good, you got auto-guiding already which is brilliant and will aid the quest for good subs no end.

[prokyon]

Very good start!

Listen to what Pete said , you will make big steps forward!

cheers

werner