Coathanger and M42 with my telephoto

[madjohn]

Hi folks,

Was out with Hants astro under the blazing full Moon on Sunday night, shot these rough and ready images using my Sigma 70 / 300 telephoto at 300mm on my astrotrac and modded 450D

I stupidly didn't check my polarscope before I left and discovered the batteries were AWOL:iamwithstupid:, so I couldn't do an exact alignment, still there is only minimal trailing

The coathanger has some lovely coloured stars in there.

The M42 image has been heavily processed to get rid of the bright Moonlight, the original image was almost white!

John

[Keiran]

Nice Image there john... Have you got any more details on the image please... ISO, length and amount of subs

Keiran

[madjohn]

Hi Keiran,

Thanks for the kind comment, for the Coathanger I shot a single 60 sec exposure at F5.6 at ISO 800 using my Sigma 70/300 telephoto working at 300mm

For M42, I used excatly the same settings but took 10 sub exposures and stacked them together using Deep Sky stacker.

As a matter of interest I've included the original stacked image before I processed it, as you can see I also cropped the image.

Looking forward to darker skies soon...

John

[Keiran]

That moonn really does bleach the image... you must be very pleased with the result of that though

[oldfruit]

I like the coathanger image.

[madjohn]

Just found a widefield shot among the others of the coathanger, this is a single 70 sec shot at ISO 800 with my telephoto working at 70mm.

Just toned down the the moonlight in Photoshop.