M42 the Orion Nebula

First attempt taking Nebula through a telescope.

 

 

Taken with a 4" F10 Vixen refractor on a RA only driven Vixen GP mount.

 

Exposure: ISO 2500, 30 second shutter at F10

 

Location: My back yard, Adelaide, South Australia.

 

Conditions: Cloudy, Full moon (only 50 deg's away), some mild wind.

This was my first attempt taking images of Nebula using a telescope.

A 4" F10 Refractor. Very high ISO 2500 @ 30 sec, so the image is

grainy, and the tracking was off a little. I only have one axis

motorized and no guide scope.

 

Any comments on how i can improve would be brilliant, thank you.

It appears your tracking could be better. The star streaks and softness of the detail in the nebula keep this from being a winning image. But keep trying!

OK, first of all, it's a very nice first attempt! Mine turned out better and worse than your's.

Now that I've said that... Nikon digital isn't the best for astro-photography, they put on very aggresive hot mirrors on all DSLRs, expecially D80 and later, including D200s. Unfortunetly Cannons have the best red response down to the near infrared. There are ways to modify the Nikons but personally, I choose to use film to avoid voiding warrenties on expensive cameras. No matter what digital camera you use, go with sub-frames. Instead of one long exposure take many short exposures, e.g. instead of 20minute single, go with 20 1 minute exposures and stack them together, you'll get a hell of a lot more detail.

 

Next, focus! http://www.stellar-international.com/ has the best type of focus tool for astro-photography. The site will explain more instead of me typing it all out. Many astro-photographers, including myself use thier focus tools, perfect focus every time.

 

Invest in a guide scope. Ideally it should be the same focal length as your main scope. Then get a 2x barlow and crosshair eyepiece, or take a little more expensive route and get a auto-guider. Beleive me, you'll need to learn guiding.

 

Finally, lower the ISO to 200-400. You'll get rid of the grainyness and subtracting dark frames you'll get rid of the noise.

 

www.cloudynights.com is a bottomless resource for all things in astronomy and extremely bottomless in the astro-photography. The shots in my port here would have never been without the help from cloudynights and their are several people members on this and that site!

 

Feel free to email questions to me, if I can answer them I will. If not, I will point you in the direction to find the answers.

 

Thank you Kit :)

 

 

Thank you Jerald.

 

Yes, as i mentioned in my critique note, the tracking is off a little and as such has blurred the neulocity also. My Vixen GP mount only has motorized tracking in RA, the DEC control is manual, so i need to fix that.

 

Cloudy nights has been in my favorites list for several years and I agree its a gold mine of information.

 

I have been an avid astronomer for many years yet i have never bothered with astrophotography, because i though it was just too hard. For a first attempt i was very happy with this shot because it was taken with basic equipment, and its only a single image with the saturation and levels adjusted in PS. To me this indicates that anyone can do this, and thats a good thing! :)

 

As a 5"x7" print sitting on my bookshelf it looks very respectable to the untrained eye, meaning, if you want to give it a go you do not need all the 'bells and gizmos' to at least get a passable result. If you want to take the very best images then you do need to spend $

 

The high ISO was a byproduct of limiting the exposure to 30sec's @ F10 ... I need better tracking (skills and equipment), as you indicate, to venture into the 120+ sec exposure, or, i need a faster scope as well.

 

As for cameras ... If that is so, then a s/h cannon 30D or Reble cand be picked up quite cheaply, and made into a dedicated astro camera by having its low pass filter remove ?

 

Its now a learning curve that im shure will be filled with highs and lows :)

 

Thanks again Jerald :)

 

P.s. I will take you up on the email

Tony, the comment left by Jerald is really interesting! I don't know much about astrophotography, but what he has said about stacking multiple short exposures vs one long exposure is interesting. I agree that the tracking is something you can work on, but I still think what you got here is very exciting! I really hope you will keep trying new things and see what you can achieve. Lastly, his comment about noise is true. If you can use lower ISO and create many shorter exposures that you can combine, that would probably yield a higher quality result, but I don't know what he means by "subtracting" dark backgrounds to get rid of noise. I know there are noise reduction tools you can buy but I have not tried any anything. I just think it is interesting that you are getting pulled into this whole new world of astrophotography that you can now spend endless hours and days and weeks learning about! I still want to see planets next heheh! Bugger...

Tony,

 

I think it looks great, especially for a first attempt!