Shooting Orion Nebula

Hello Everyone,

I want shoot the Orion Nebula.

Last night I used the Celestron Nexstar 6se, Canon 7d, 2x barlow, and appropriate tmount.

Does anyone have suggestions for how to make this work?

Last night I was able to focus through the camera eyepiece and get the nebula viewable and in apparent focus. However, the image only produced the 3 star cluster.

Any advice?

I also have the tmount that goes into the telescope without the eyepiece and barlow attached. I have a reducer for that option from f10 to f6.

Thank for your time.

Sincerely,

Lloyd

what you see in the viewer is not what you get in the photo, so try to take a 30 seconds shot and you will see the bluish clouds, if you can take several of 30 secs shots you can then stack them.
You do not need the 2x barlow you have magnified the field so much thus you only see the trapesium?, I have shot M42 with the 400 mm 80 mm ED prime into the camera.

To get the entire Orion nebula in the field of view of a 7D, you need no more than about 1000mm focal length. With the 2X barlow on the 6SE, you were using 3000mm, way too much to get the entire nebula. Also, to get some of the nebulosity to show up in a reasonable exposure time, you need well under f/10, and with the 2X barlow you were shooting at f/20.

As Tony said, you definitely need to lose the barlow, and using the .6 focal reducer would be an improvement. Then you would be shooting at 900mm focal length and f/6, which should give you an image you will recognize in 30 seconds or so. Don't forget that M42 is about 6 times the size of the full moon!

Don

Thanks for the help. I am posting a few examples of what I was able to get and how.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Hi there,

Bright as it is, M42 is not the easiest nebula to shoot, as the difference in luminosity between the trapezium (there are 4 stars in the middle, not three) and the faint extensions is quite huge.

My advice is to shoot HDR - a few 10s shots for the bright core, several 30s shots for the surroundings and again a few 1 to 2 minute exposures for the faint extensions.

for a first approach, to get the feel of the thing, I've had decent results with a 80mm diameter refractor @ f/5 (that makes for 400mm focal length) with a 350D @ ISO 800 and 30s exposures. core a bit burnt, extensions not really there, but an acceptable average overall, like I said, to get the feel of the beast, before refining exposure.

L.

This 45 second exporure of the Orion Nebula was taken with my old 10D attached to my 10" SCT.
http://jatobservatory.​org …%20(GreatNebula​Orion).jpg

As mentioned earlier M42 is a bit tough because of the different brightness levels in the nebula (the center is washed out)/