Challenge #3, The Sword of Orion

This month our target is The Sword of Orion, including M42(The Great Orion Nebula) and NGC 1977 (The Running Man Nebula). Have fun and don't forget to post your images here.

Oh goody, a subject I can actually find in the night sky.

Is there any merit in making the challenge thread a sticky so that it a) serves as a reminder that a comp. is available and b) is easier to find.

Excellent. Thanks Steve. The only astrophoto I've ever taken was of M42 I have an Orion-based little "project" in mind for when the skies clear, so I can certainly make this a part of that.

Had a few clear nights recently, so I've been able to test my mount after taking it apart and giving it a bit of a service. I shot towards M42 at 600mm and pretty much got the whole sword in easily. Should make for a nice target.

Good choice and as I look out of the window, the sky has gone blue!!!

chris.bailey wrote in post #7124203
Good choice and as I look out of the window, the sky has gone blue!!!

Don't know what it's been like in Norfolk, but we've had quite a few clear nights on the south coast lately. Really dewey though. It's a shame that Orion lies relatively low in the south, and from my site I get the worst light pollution in the south. I'm not equipped to go to another site either, so I'll have to do the best I can. I must make a concerted effort this month. (I've even started looking around at 66mm and 80mm ED APOs!! )

Adrena1in wrote in post #7124706
Don't know what it's been like in Norfolk, but we've had quite a few clear nights on the south coast lately. Really dewey though. It's a shame that Orion lies relatively low in the south, and from my site I get the worst light pollution in the south. I'm not equipped to go to another site either, so I'll have to do the best I can. I must make a concerted effort this month. (I've even started looking around at 66mm and 80mm ED APOs!! )

Very patchy here. If its clear at 6pm or so its cloudy by 9pm and vice versa. Even clear nights have had a thin layer of high cloud so seeing has not been great. Have set up many times and then packed away again. Yes on the few clear nights it has been very damp and I've been glad of the dew heaters which have worked a treat.

I would go 80mm, its a great size scope and you can always FR downwards. There is a good choice of good 80mm scopes around now. I played with a W/O Megrez 80 a few weeks ago and it is very nice indeed

OK here is my first shot at this, we recently moved to a new town that unlike Auckland (where I came from) does not suffer from light polution.
I had my Telescope out last night and was trying to shoot the nebula but just plain couldn't get the darn thing working, so I mounted my 40D + 70-200 on the telescope mount and got this shot, the first is the actual uncropped shot, the second is a crop.
Exposure was f/2.8 5 seconds ISO400. Exposure has been bumped by two stops in DPP and contrast reduced and NR applied:

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Here is a kind of self portrait of me and my attempt at imaging the sword of Orion If you look hard enough, you can see my ghostly red face while I fiddle with the telescope. The bright rectangle is the chimp screen of my 40D.

I got some good images of the sword, but the stars are too trailed for my liking, so this is my entry....the sword is in there!

Image was taken with my 350D, 18-55mm lens mounted on a tripod. I activated the camera with the RC-1 remote.

Scott

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What lens and settings did you use to get those?

I'm going to try to figure out where that is so I can contribute too

Kajuah wrote in post #7184713
I'm going to try to figure out where that is so I can contribute too

Try this, easy if you have a clear sky, it looks like a smudge to the naked eye:
http://homeboyastronom​y.com …to-find-orion-nebula-m42/

I finished up 4 hours of Ha data last night and was able to grab 5 hours of RGB data. Processing the almost 60 images and stacking is taking a bit of time. Should be up by Monday night

Flying Pete, I tried to photograph Orion's sword the one clear night we had, my first ever attempt at photographing the stars, and what I captured was nothing like what you did. Was there anything else that you did, either during capture or processing? Did you use filters? What is DPP? I have CS3 and always use that for processing my portrait photography, but do not know if astrophotography requires a different processing program.

I also have a 40D, but I don't have as fast a lens, my 80-200mm lens gives me a 4.5 at best, about a 2 stop difference. So in order to keep a 5 second exposure I could bump up my ISO to 1600. I will give that a try the next time there are some clear skies and hope to have something of a little more identifiable nebula.

I am very new to this, but have always had a facination with the stars and wanting to photograph them. A couple years ago I used my dad's telescope to photograph the moon which came out okay considering the clouds, but I had never tried anything else. If I can figure out how to capture something like this nebula with just my camera, I just might feel confident enough to try deep sky objects using my dad's telescope again.