Orion Nebula, by Jove I think I have it sussed..

[Quatermass]

I spent 3 hours freezing my but off to get this image but it was soo worth it!

20 shots 30second exposure ISO of 800. Stacked in registax 5 and noise removed in photo shop. I had no idea I could do this with my limited set up but I think I may be doomed to becoming obsessed with this what a lot of fun.

[Dave]

Hope you don't mind. I had a bit of a tweak...

You've captured more than you think.

Dave

[Catanonia]

Well done, definately the Orion Nebula you have there mate.

Congrats and great picture to work on.

More subs, more and more of them

[Steve 1962]

Yup - definately M42 - very well done - nicely focussed too!

[Quatermass]

Thanks chaps I haven't got the hang of taking lots of pictures and stacking them yet but plenty of practice should help trouble is there is a big tree that block the nebula for an hour and then its back out side again. Its is getting really cold out side now and I am wishing I had a nice warm observatory to run to might give it another crack this evening didnt realize that astronomy could get so cold I thought night fishing was demanding but this is testing my resolve. I think converting my shed to an observatory is on the cards next year..

How many subs should I take do you think that was 20 anything else I should be doing?

[Bizibilder]

Assuming your mount is unguided then try 1min subs (or 90secs if you can get away with it) and take as many as you can. For that particular target you may also need some "short subs" of, say, 10-15 seconds to capture the Core that is overexposed in anything longer.

You may also want to try "Deep Sky Stacker" (freeware) to stack your images. You should also take some "darks" - just put the lens-cap on the camera and take 20 or so shots of the same exposure length as the "light" images of the nebula. Add them in using DSS and that should help improve the image (There are loads of threads about darks, flats etc on the forum - all a bit confusing to start with but take things one step at a time and you'll get there in the end!)

[Ags]

I like the image - the stars are nice and round and the colors of the nebula have come out well.

[Quatermass]

Thanks for that I didnt think about taking shorter exposures for the core but your right it is quite bright. I was set up to give it a go tonight but the clouds moved in and spoiled my fun. Its is really cold out there at the moment and the weather forecast is for it to get even colder but I suppose that means the atmosphere will be nice and clean. I was thinking of making the effort and taking a drive outside of the town to get a nice dark sight and take 100s of shots to stack and mess around with later on. I Tryed getting some shots of the Andromedia Galaxy but that was much harder so think I will stick with the Orion Nebula for the time being.So if I went out tomorrow say and got all set up and ready to go how many shots do you think I should take and what sort of variations on the shots ie 20 or 30 for the core and the same again at a higher ISO and then some more with the lens cap on just need a rough idea of how many to get a good result. The scope is being guided with an RA motor drive dont have a go to system. Dont have a clue what darks and flats are?

[Luke]

there is a big tree that block the nebula for an hour

I feel your tree pain. Worst of all, we planted the tree ourselves that blocks our views, in the time before we got into astronomy. We also did some gardening that makes it hard to have a little observatory without ruining the work we did. Arghhh! I blame these gardening programmes, dangerous things!

Well done on your nebula pic

[johnh]

Excellent start and great fun, you got really good trapezium nebula detail, now all you need is to learn the finer arts of the processing game. I remember my finger pain with my first M42 and pity its so low from UK.

JohnH.

[Quatermass]

I do have a chain saw and it is very tempting to take that dam tree down it means I have to wait for ages to get a decent shot and my landlord want it taken down so it days are numbered plus I hate having to rack up all the dead leafs.

Have to swot up on my photo shop methods and practice some more but its great fun doing this adds another dimension to observing and when its cold outside its nice to spend and evening messing around with the images.

[swag72]

That is a great pic, and something I am wishing to get too. As a total newbie though, I have a really dumb question. If I don't track using my mount, and I take an exposure, as it moves across the sky I just move the mount by hand? Does the stacking software line it all up at the end?

[Catanonia]

That is a great pic, and something I am wishing to get too. As a total newbie though, I have a really dumb question. If I don't track using my mount, and I take an exposure, as it moves across the sky I just move the mount by hand? Does the stacking software line it all up at the end?

You can move it by hand, very difficult for hours on end doing visual guiding. Best to use a powered tracking mount or even better a guide scope and camera to send signals to the mount to automate it.

If you use short enough exposures to limit star trailing you can use DeepSkyStacker to stack them and produce the intersection result.

[peter shah]

colour is great.... looking at it closely i bet you can pull out a bit more from the raw file;)

3hours well spent

[jgs001]

It's a good start. I agree with Bizi... restack the original data in Deep Sky Stacker, it produces much better results on this sort of data.

[Quatermass]

That is a great pic, and something I am wishing to get too. As a total newbie though, I have a really dumb question. If I don't track using my mount, and I take an exposure, as it moves across the sky I just move the mount by hand? Does the stacking software line it all up at the end?

Here is the same image again this time it was stacked in deep sky stacker which did a much better job then Registax I felt. I have also found a great series of tutorials on photo-shop that really helped with the core and reducing the brightness. I am amazed at how much detail can be got out of the images I captured and Im looking forward to getting out there and taking some more and using flats and darks this time.

I am a total beginner on all this but the main things that have helped are making sure the telescope is correctly polar aligned which takes about half an hour and the use of the bahtinov mask to make sure everthing is in focus. I dont have a go to mount and all I am using is an RA drive motor to keep track. I guess you could move the scope by hand but the results would be poor and if your going to be out there in the cold using the RA drive is a must have. An RA drive for the Sky watcher EQ5 mount is about 78.00 quid and really helps.

I have a shutter release on order to take longer exposures so will post my progress. If any who is just starting like me wants more info on what I am doing feel free to PM me and I will be happy to share what I am doing as I progress.

Heres is the link for the Photoshop tutorial Atalas Astronomy

And heres the image I have been working on using deepsky stacker and these photoshop tutorial.

[jgs001]

That's a nicer looking image, but it looks like the blacks are a bit clipped and that has probably lost you some faint nebula into the bargain... try and avoid removing too much out of the blacks end of the image.

[Quatermass]

Having got this far and seeing other shots of the nebula I realize how much is missing because I have not done longer exposures yet. The nice thing about this is that after you have gone out and collected all your data and enjoyed an evening under the stars you can spend an evening working on the data. Best of both worlds. I clearly have a lot more to learn but when I first got into this and bought my telescope it was one of the things I wanted to do. It would be interesting to see the early images of the Orion Nebula from others compared to what they can do know.