Orion Nebula

Comment

Comment by Matt Wilson on April 3, 2011 at 7:28pm

I got the "idea" to do different lengths of exposure from R. Scott Ireland's book Photoshop Astronomy. All my best original thinking can be traced back to somewhere... Fortunately, my house is on the extreme SE part of the town. Nobody South or East of me. I have 10" Meade SCT and will move up to that after I work out all bugs and get more comfortable with what I am doing. I am timid with the Meade because of the mirror flop. Trying to find some info about DIY mirror lockdown that is not traumatic to the ota. Thanks for your comments Al and I'll be following you to see what's up :)

Comment by Al McAdam on April 3, 2011 at 4:23pm

I just jumped over to Google Earth and looked up Hurley, I hope you are away from the lights as even a small town can be a problem. I had to go to Sudbury, Ontario from just north of Toronto and we left at 4:45am and once we were an hour plus northbound the sky was really dark except when we came to these very large illuminated signs that said, " Watch out for deer and moose at night" so needless to say both of us were watching the road instead of the stars.

Comment by Al McAdam on April 3, 2011 at 4:15pm

Wow your answer was great and something to work towards. I have a C8 and a Sony Alpha 200 that does not have liveview. I am having fun with the new C8 but I seemed to achieve better images with my Celestron 120 xlt refractor but there is a learning curve. I like the fact that you combined the various time exposures, I will have to try that before I lose M42 behind my house. Our out of town astronomy site will probably not be ready until near the end of the month but in the meantime I will try your technique. Thanks Al

Comment by Matt Wilson on April 3, 2011 at 3:51pm

Hi Al, My setup is in my backyard in Hurley, NM with a 10'x12' roll-off roof, built from plans bought from skyshed. I have my CI-700 GEM (G11 clone) mounted on a 12" concrete pier, isolated from the observatory. The imaging gear consists of ES127 apo that I am using mostly as a guide scope. An Astrotech 65 EDQ as the primary imager (I was told to get something with a forgiving image scale to start out). The camera with M42 was a Canon 450D unmodified. I've since purchased through astromart a Canon 500D that was modified. I use a DSI II and PHD as a guiding software with Shoestring GPUSB to send the guiding signals through. I use Images Plus camera control to acquire the subs and the image processor to stack and process afterward. On this composite, I took different exposure times to try to eek out the trapezium and longer lengths to expose the outer portions of the nebula. I put all this together in PS as layers and with masks I tried to blend the shorter exposures with the longer ones. That was probably more then you expected as an answer. I'm new here so I am trying put myself out there. Otherwise I turn into a lurker :)

Comment by Al McAdam on April 2, 2011 at 5:39pm

Great photo can you give the specifics of your setup and how you processed them ie DSS
Thanks Al