First attempt at Orion nebula

[Quatermass]

What a thrill it was this evening taking these shots and then getting in doors out of the cold and seeing what I had managed to do. This is my first attempt at getting a shot of the Orion Nebula so I am very excited lol.

I got a nice shot of the Orion constellation between the moon and the street light in the car park at the back of my house. I am now addicted to this god help me...

[jnp]

Welcome to the club. Your image is a bit small so we cant see much, but you definitely have some nebulosity coming through.

Is this a single shot or a stack and what exposure and/or ISO ?

cheers

John

[Taff]

Hi' Well done with your first capture of M42.You will capture more of the nebula when the moon is out of the way.Mark

[Quatermass]

Hi this was done with my Pansonic Lumix G1 attached to my sky watcher explorer with an adapter on the 2inch barrel. I had it on aperture priority with ISO was 200 and exposure was 13 seconds still have not got it figured out yet. The image was not stacked just put it through photo shop to darken it and bring out some more detail. It was a really bright full moon so it was a bit washed out. Mount was the eq5 with RA drive only. My main problem at the moment is focusing correctly tried a focus mask but it didn't really make much difference so going to experiment with the digital zoom x2 and x4 focus on that then go back to normal. So much to learn..

[Shibby]

Quatermass, considering it was only a single sub of 13s, you have a very decent result there! Next time take 30 subs and stack the images, you'll be amazed at how much extra detail comes out.

Aperture priority mode doesn't make any sense as you don't have a lens attached - the aperture of your scope is fixed! Put it into manual mode. Most people here seem to use ISO-800 as a good balance between signal and noise.

[davew]

You picked a great night to try this But then what choice to you have ? Pretty awful pollution for your shot. As you're in Suffolk, maybe try and get into the dark bits.

Despite all that, you've got a neat little photo for your efforts. Try what Shibby says and go manual if you can and get loads of subs.

All good practice.

Dave.

[Dean]

Great start

Dean

[Quatermass]

Thanks for the advice chaps I will give all that a try tonight if it stays clear. Managed to get some more shots last night as it was clear skys for good while but very cold brrrr. Heres my best attempt so far with an ISO of 400 and 30 second exposure. I put the images in photo shop and went into layers then channels to alter the red and blue channels that had a lot of noise on them used blur to get rid of the noise and smooth out the image which works quite well quite pleased with this one and when I get a really dark sky should be able to get something better. Had a go at the Andromeda galaxy as well but it was too faint for anything worth the effort. Any way heres the image.

And one of Capella