the mother of all nature (m42)

hello guy's and gals.
i think its been several years since i posted last .
and things where looking up on the birding front when i sold my bigmos and got the af-s 300mm f4 and this lens attached to the d300 was a dream.. but money got tight and ive since sold nealy all lens.

ive still got the d300 and a sony hx100v for walking about .

the worst thing that happened to me was the loss of a very close freind who passed away last year and since then going out to the wildlife parks dont seem to be the same .

his family had arranged to see me about something and it was,nt untill i was told that i will be getting his sony camera (a550 and tamron macro lens.) .

since then ive built a observatory from which im typing this story .
so im pc'ed up to connect my heq5 pro mount . i told my friends wife that i will use the sony for astro work as i think looking up at the heavens make sence.

that is awesome, i hope you post more.

Amazing image!

thank you both very much appreciate any comments.

mid july here in the uk will be the time for me to get some wide agnle shot og the milkyway so hope fully get some astro shooting done.
cherrs j

wow so clean and smooth! excellent!

Very awsome. Had a Celestron 5 and Mead 10 awhile back. Like to get into astro again. As with almost anything $$$$$ is the limiting factor.

Nice image,and my favorite target. IMHO you may ease off on the noise reduction a bit. There's some really cool wispy gas and dust in there.

cheers folks
i now what you mean toxic neat imeage over kill ill have yo easy of on the slider.
thats my only disapointment with the a 550 sony havent quit got noise control like canon / nikon etc.

I use Noise Ninja in Photoshop. It's a trade off between noise and smoothness. I like the story you put up too. I'm going to do an "Andromeda project" this year in remembrance of my uncle who died last year. When I was young I didn't know that we could see things that were outside of the Milky Way. He took me outside with a pair of binoculars and showed me Andromeda, which we called "Our fuzzy neighbor next door".

Here is a M51 I did with a unmodified T2i last year.
it's from a stack of (5) x 4 minutes

http://i347.photobucke​t.com …s/p446/mokpt/IM​G_2303.jpg

then I added images from a modified 1000D to bring out the reds
(5) x 8 min stack plus the T2i stack, and a 30 second image for the core

http://i347.photobucke​t.com …nt2ijpeg33-21withcore.jpg

Orion is a wonderful target. It's big, and bright, and up in the clear winter sky. I almost can't get enough images of it. You've already done well...and I am a Sony fan too, but when I started Canon seemed the way to go. I'm sure you will get some images that will make your jaw drop, especially when you think of your friend.

Cheers

Mo

Lot's of detail but i agree you need to back off the Noise setting . It's way too soft that some stars in the center cannot even be seen .

thanks ron and mo .

img mo m31 i was thinking the same thing autom to early winter andromeda will be from my left east and staying high in the sky all the way around to the nth/wst.

at the mo here in the uk ill have to stay up late and getting up for work at 5.30am which i only have the week ends but it normaly rains or clounds. so im not doing much.

cheers j