Capturing Orion


Finishing my build of the Astroshed coincided with the start of Autumn in the UK and the first realistic chance of getting some decent time on the winter constellations. I'd planned to tackle M31, the Andromeda galaxy first but I found myself limited by the high magnification of my Skywatcher 150 Mak. I just couldn't get the framing I was after and soon realised I needed to reduce my focal length, either through a focal reducer for the Mak or just get a smaller scope.

 My attention turned to Orion, the Hunter. Probably the constellation most people would recognise, with the 3 stars forming his belt,Betelguese (pronounced Beetle_Juice)the large orange star forming his right shoulder, Rigel on his left ankle and of course the Orion Nebula, an object I had enjoyed looking at as a boy through my first pair of binoculars, forming part of Orion's sword.


M42 - The Orion Nebula
I'd seen some wonderful images of the Orion nebula in many publication and forums ...spectacular images showing Orion in a variety of colours, either full RGB, narrowband or a blend of both. I have a modified DSLR as my main camera and I knew I would be able to get a lot of the detail in nebula, but nothing really prepared my for the first image I took of M42......I mean, WOW! I still can't believe I took this picture. 60x30 sec images stacked in DSS did preserve the detail of the central core known as the trapezium. OK, what else is up here....?

As it turns out, quite a lot!

 The Horsehead and Flame nebula
This one really challenged me. Again I'd seen some amazing images of these to nebulae....as impressive and iconc as M42 in my opinion...but how do you deal with the bright start Alnitak? I'll share some of my early attempts here. These images were all taken through my 150 Mak, sometimes with a focal reducer, sometimes without. All with levels of frustration with my image capturing and processing skills. I gave up during November 2017, dug deep into my pocket and purchased a small refractor.....


















The joy of a refractor
Christmas 2017, and things start to drop into place. I manage to bag an absolute pristine 2nd hand Altair Astro 72 ED-R refractor for a fraction of the original cost and put it to work on Orion. What a difference! All of a sudden, my images and data gathering sessions came to life. Easy focusing, guiding and better image quality became available to me. Excited to put this to use I turned my scope back on the Horesehead and Flame nebula........what a difference!

 The following day I switched over to The Orion Nebula with equally impressive results, now incorporating the running man nebula


......and finally, Orion in wide field format.
I'd never heard of Barnard's loop until if flicked through the pages of the christmas present, Astronomy Photographer of the Year (collection 6) from my son, Joshua. On page 131, there is a superb wide field shot of Orion sat next to the milky way, taken by Zhong Wu from Yunnan province, China. The picture shows a mass of red nebula swirling around Orion's belt and sword. Not visible to the naked eye and easily missed if you're just concentrating on the usual targets in Orion - but just as impressive as the horsehead.
I had a brief attempt to capture this with my DSLR mounted on my telescope mount with a 70-300mm zoom lens. The weather was against me but I did get enough data to show a faint outline of Barnard's Loop with the flame, horsehead, running man and Orion nebula central to the image.

 Orion is moving out of reach for me now, setting over my house too early in the evening to get some decent time on it....so I'm already looking forward to next autumn and have plans to re-visit this iconic constellation, possibly with some narrowband data...

 Equipment used for these images:

  • Skywatcher 150 Maksukov-Cassegrain scope
  • Altair Astro 72 ED-R refractor scope
  • HEQ5 Pro Mount driven by EQ Mod
  • Orion Guidescope with QHY5II-C camera
  • Canon 450D (modified)
  • Carte De Ceil planetarium software
  • Backyard EOS
  • PHD2 guiding
  • Deepsky Stacker
  • Photoshop CC
  • Lightroom CC
Clear skies everyone!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Short nights? Warm weather? Must be summer!

Image
My new logo - courtesy of graphic design genius Amy Platkiw Looking back on my list of blogs, the last update from Astroshed@Sawley was 28th April 2018. So.....did I just give up? Declare the nights too short and simply go to bed? Nope - I got busy!! I took an early holiday in May. A cruise along the Norwegian Fjords had been planned for a while....so I took the opportunity to dismantle my mount and telescope and send the mount into Rother Valley Optics for a full service, re-grease, new bearings and a belt mod. Given the waiting list and turn around time for this service was 3-4 weeks, heading into the summer seemed to be the right time to do this with light nights etc - so I went for it! And then went on holiday!  Even while I was away I managed to get some lunar images. Check this out! A fantastic moonrise over Nordfjord taken from the upper deck of Cunard's Queen Victoria. It was early, mind! I stood next to the galley night shift when I took this picture. They wer
Read more

Time to build the Astroshed

Image
Time to build the Astroshed I don’t know when exactly I knew I needed my Astroshed. Maybe it was borne out of necessity; realising I had more kit than I knew where to put; my old shed being on my to-do list to demolish or I just got fed up of carting everything into the back garden to set-up and breakdown every time there was a solid chance of a clear night. I think it was the fact that, even when I got set up, I couldn’t move easily around the garden without setting of my neighbours security lights. I can remember a particularly frustrating session where this happened, only to be quickly followed with more frustration when the clouds rolled in. There had to be a better way to do this…… Trawling the internet one evening I came across a blog written by an amateur astronomer who had written about the same issues but had done something about it. Further research revealed a plethora of Youtube videos and stories of people converting mundane outbuildings, pre-fab sheds or even buil
Read more

Shoot the Moon

Image
Shoot the Moon It's a common sight in the night sky..... too common for some astronomers who always crave dark skies for deep sky imaging. I get the frustration; especially when a full moon coincides with the first (and only) clear night for months. But I would challenge my astronomer colleagues we with this simple thought. How many of today's astronomers interest in the beauty of the night sky started with their first look at the moon through a pair of binoculars? Don't we owe something to the moon for getting us into this hobby in the first place? You have to work with it, avoid it if you must but if you can't, by all means pay it a visit with your telescopes and remind yourself where it all started. Just a thought. A thumbnail crescent moon  - my favourite profile For me, the best times to observe and image the moon are in the early waxing and late waning phases. There is nothing more evocative than an early morning thumbnail crescent moon, close to the hor
Read more