First EVER deep sky image Orion Nebula!

[Space Cowboy]

Phew! Got my first deep sky images tonight. M42 taken with point & shoot compact camera afocal with 32mm eyepiece, 15 sec subs at iso 1600. Skywatcher 250 auto Dob.

Stacked 10 in DSS but not sure what i'm doing and prefer the single 15 sec shot. Colours on stacked image are poor possibly the jpeg compression or my inexperience.

Got to say I'm well chuffed with the result considering my not ideal equipment!

First image is single 15 sec image and 2nd is the 10 image stack with 5 darks added.

[ralph1245]

well done.

[Space Cowboy]

Cheers Ralph!

[Psychobilly]

Yep well done...

DSS stacks tend to need a saturation boost to get the colour back...

Once the images have finished stacking and the result is on screen in DSS click on the saturation tab and adjust the slider.. you will need to click Apply to see the changes...

You can also tweak luminance and levels in the same way if you muck thinks up click Reset ...

You can also make the changes in your fav post processing prog..

Billy...

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Billy! I did adjust saturation & Luminance. There was a warning message at start of stacking saying it could not properly process colours because of jpeg compression.

Not sure what has caused the ring affect on stacked image,maybe the eyepiece lens not being perfectly square with camera (camera clamped not threaded onto eyepiece) or possibly light leaking in around shroud on flextube OTA?

[Psychobilly]

Ideally if the camera can save in another format use that - TIF maybe ?... jpegs are compressed 8 bit/ch images that cant really be stretched much...

What camera is it so i can download the manual an see what settings can be changed...?

The ring effect is mainly due to the vignetting (light fall off) which you will get with afocal capture...

Theres something magical about afocal images in so much that they give you a real sense of looking through the EP but with the added benefit of some colour...

Billy...

[Space Cowboy]

As far as I can see jpeg is the only format. Cheap Benq 12mp Digital Camera - 41136 - discounts & offers

I'm certainly pleased considering its only a £40 camera! I also imaged the seven sisters and Andromeda but tracking was playing up. Need to fit a counter weight to the OTA as the camera plus adapter bracket weighs almost 1/2 kg.

[Space Cowboy]

Below is 2 images from stacking 9 15 sec subs at iso 800. This seems a better setting showing more colours. Second image has 5 darks added (darks were from iso 1600 set as used wrong exposure on iso 800 darks)

[Digz]

I can definitely see an improvement in the images.

There is vignetting visible which flats would help with, but they seem to be a dark art for me.

Try and gather as many subs as you can and throw them all into DSS and see what happens.

[Space Cowboy]

Cheers Digz!