My first DSO

[ShropshireLad]

The Orion Nebula last night, some cloud drifted in around my 8th capture and light pollution not good here.
My setting are these :-
Skywatcher AZ-GTI in az mode
Canon 80D sigma 150-600mm lens @ 500mm
20 seconds f11 iso 800
25 Images ..... 19 Darks ..... 24 Bias .
Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop
Your cc very welcome also any suggestions on changing my settings as I'm very new to this.
.

 

[Phiggys]

Excellent capture

 

[learningtofly]

Great job!

 

[Jannyfox]

Why f11? You're better to open up the aperature (DOF isn't an issue). Set f6.3, take a set at 25 sec, another set at 10 sec and if you can do an HDR combination after you've stacked the two sets seperately. You'll find that very shot on my flickr (there's 2 Orion Nebula shots there, look for the wider field one) in the astronomy album, taken with a Canon 550D and the same lens. The group of stars at the top of your image with a faint hint of colour round them is NGC1977, the Running Man Nebula. It looks rather nice in my image.

 

[Norkie]

Very good indeed

 

[ShropshireLad]

Why f11? You're better to open up the aperature (DOF isn't an issue). Set f6.3, take a set at 25 sec, another set at 10 sec and if you can do an HDR combination after you've stacked the two sets seperately. You'll find that very shot on my flickr (there's 2 Orion Nebula shots there, look for the wider field one) in the astronomy album, taken with a Canon 550D and the same lens. The group of stars at the top of your image with a faint hint of colour round them is NGC1977, the Running Man Nebula. It looks rather nice in my image.

Thank you for your reply .... I chose f11 as when I tried a test image f5.6 30sec the image on the back of the camera was very bright.
I am following you now on flickr .... what iso were you using on those images and how many lights
I have a lot to learn ......
Lew
Ah Sorry I just noticed your settings on flickr.

 

[Jannyfox]

the image on the back of the camera was very bright.

The problem with the Orion Nebula, and with a number of other DSOs, is that the actual star forming region is very bright, but the outlying areas of the nebula, and the Running Man which is a reflection nebula not an emission nebula are faint, but it's here that you see the extent and lovely detail of the nebula. Just like in normal photography, you can't capture the faint stuff on the same exposure as the bright stuff without burning out the highlights. Hence the HDR merge if you can do it (I've never used Photoshop).

 

[smr]

Use the widest aperture you possibly can on that lens, we're collecting photons millions of light years away that have taken years to get here, so you want to open the aperture, not restrict it... the aim is to gather as much light as you can.

With the Canon 80D it has an ISO-invariant sensor, so you can use ISO 200, especially if you're blowing out the core with 20 second exposures...

So widest aperture and ISO 200 is my recommendation.

I never find darks necessary, but I use bias, and I use flat frames to even out the optical field.