Orion Nebular (trial pic) and the moon

michael23

michael23

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After finally treating myself to a nice new lens, I decided to take advantage of tonights few minutes of clear skys and turn my sigma 50-500 to the skys.

Orion Nebula

This was a trial pic really, but I was quite pleased with the outcome of it. Just a single frame, cropped and given a bit of a contrast boost in elements. There is a lot of room for improvement, but it is a good start I think




orion nebula trial by scilly puffin, on Flickr

Moon #1


Moon. by scilly puffin, on Flickr

Moon #2,
This was 10 images stacked in registax then edited in elements 10,


Moon, 10x pic stack by scilly puffin, on Flickr
 
tricky stuff...the moon looks best
 
The first moon pic is the best for me, good focus with a decent bit of detail, the second looks a bit over processed. Full moon is probably not the best time to get pictures of the moon.

Trouble with taking single shot pictures of deep sky objects like the Orion Nebula is that because it's so far away you can't really get a decent shot of it without some sort of decent motorized mount, the exposure would have to be too long to get any decent detail which causes the star trail, and it only gets worse the longer the length of the lens.

Your best option would probably be to take a good few shorter exposures and then stack them in a program like Deep Sky Stacker. You'd want to take a few "dark" shots as well to stack.
 
Michael, nice job on the first moon, you've got some colour detail coming through... Gotta agree with Gary, the exposure length becomes too short on an untracked tripod with longer focal lengths to be of much use.. I spose if you were to capture 300 or so exposures of this length and stack them (although you'd have to keep adjusting the aim) you might get some good detail coming through. In this one, it actually looks like you had a bounce from mirror slap... the stars show as double points... so some sort of short sharp effect.. There's some of the nebula in there though, which is good going.
 
mrtoad said:
tricky stuff...the moon looks best
Click to expand...

milster said:
The first moon pic is the best for me, good focus with a decent bit of detail, the second looks a bit over processed. Full moon is probably not the best time to get pictures of the moon.

Trouble with taking single shot pictures of deep sky objects like the Orion Nebula is that because it's so far away you can't really get a decent shot of it without some sort of decent motorized mount, the exposure would have to be too long to get any decent detail which causes the star trail, and it only gets worse the longer the length of the lens.

Your best option would probably be to take a good few shorter exposures and then stack them in a program like Deep Sky Stacker. You'd want to take a few "dark" shots as well to stack.
Click to expand...

jgs001 said:
Michael, nice job on the first moon, you've got some colour detail coming through... Gotta agree with Gary, the exposure length becomes too short on an untracked tripod with longer focal lengths to be of much use.. I spose if you were to capture 300 or so exposures of this length and stack them (although you'd have to keep adjusting the aim) you might get some good detail coming through. In this one, it actually looks like you had a bounce from mirror slap... the stars show as double points... so some sort of short sharp effect.. There's some of the nebula in there though, which is good going.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for the comments. The exposure was 2 seconds at iso 1600, I will use mirror lock up in future. I do have a meade lxd55 mount and an 8"sct, and I need to look into using it for long exposures. I see what you mean about the 2nd moon shot, it does appear processed a little too much and number 1 being my fave.
 
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