Tej Dyal
M42 Orion Nebula from Toy's Hill
My friend and I explored a new site for visual astronomy and astrophotgraphy.
Toy's Hill Car Park in the South Downs, just a few miles outside the M25.
My main desire was for visual astronomy and enjoy the luxury of darker skies than in my usual light polluted London abode.
As we were setting up our equipment, we were startled to see a string of satellites equally spaced apart moving across the sky, each one as bright as the ISS. When we reported our sighting to our society astro guru, Mike Meynell, on the followiiing day, he knew exactly what we saw and it aint good news! What we observed was a batch of Elun Musk's 184 Starlink satellites with a further 2000 yet to be launched! Oh oh...!
Anywyay, after I enjoyed a session of visual astronomy with my 80mm refractor, I finished off the evening with a short astrophoto shoot of Orion Nebula.
So this is a 9 minute total exposure capture of Orion Nebula M42 (and M43) using an 80mm Apochramtic refractor (Equinox 80) on an Alt Az computerised mount (Nexstar 8SE).
I want to show that its possbile to do deep space astrophotography with an Alt Az mount which is largely unfavoured by astrophotgraphers because of field rotation and of single frame expoasure limited to around 10 seconds average.
But thanks to the clever coding of stacking software, Deep Space Stacker, those restrictions can be overcome.
I do have an equatorial computerised mount, so why do I persist with carryiing this alt az mount? Well the Nexstar mount is a considerably lighter weight system to carry around, with no need for counter weights and the setup is considerably quicker with no need for the painful polar alignment stage! Thats why!
Toy's Hill is just outside the M25 with considerably darker skies than in London. However, despite being listed as a dark site it's not really dark enough to reveal the Milky Way. Open clusters such as the Hyades, and Lambda Orionis can be seen with the naked eye but Andromeda was barely visible.
Equipment:
Camera: Canon 650D (unmodded)
Telescope: Equinox 80 APO
Mount: Celestron Nexstar 8SE
Other components: Flattener, Dell Laptop tethered to camera for easier focussing and EOS Utilities to control camera. 12V hairdryer to combat dew which built up occasionally.
Capture method:
189 frames each being 3.2 seconds - 10 minutes total exposure time.
ISO 1600
50 Dark frames
20 Bias frames
Post Processing:
Stacked with Deep Space Stacker,
Levels and curves adjustment in PS to bring out colour an details. No masking done, all adjustments applied globally.
M42 Orion Nebula from Toy's Hill
My friend and I explored a new site for visual astronomy and astrophotgraphy.
Toy's Hill Car Park in the South Downs, just a few miles outside the M25.
My main desire was for visual astronomy and enjoy the luxury of darker skies than in my usual light polluted London abode.
As we were setting up our equipment, we were startled to see a string of satellites equally spaced apart moving across the sky, each one as bright as the ISS. When we reported our sighting to our society astro guru, Mike Meynell, on the followiiing day, he knew exactly what we saw and it aint good news! What we observed was a batch of Elun Musk's 184 Starlink satellites with a further 2000 yet to be launched! Oh oh...!
Anywyay, after I enjoyed a session of visual astronomy with my 80mm refractor, I finished off the evening with a short astrophoto shoot of Orion Nebula.
So this is a 9 minute total exposure capture of Orion Nebula M42 (and M43) using an 80mm Apochramtic refractor (Equinox 80) on an Alt Az computerised mount (Nexstar 8SE).
I want to show that its possbile to do deep space astrophotography with an Alt Az mount which is largely unfavoured by astrophotgraphers because of field rotation and of single frame expoasure limited to around 10 seconds average.
But thanks to the clever coding of stacking software, Deep Space Stacker, those restrictions can be overcome.
I do have an equatorial computerised mount, so why do I persist with carryiing this alt az mount? Well the Nexstar mount is a considerably lighter weight system to carry around, with no need for counter weights and the setup is considerably quicker with no need for the painful polar alignment stage! Thats why!
Toy's Hill is just outside the M25 with considerably darker skies than in London. However, despite being listed as a dark site it's not really dark enough to reveal the Milky Way. Open clusters such as the Hyades, and Lambda Orionis can be seen with the naked eye but Andromeda was barely visible.
Equipment:
Camera: Canon 650D (unmodded)
Telescope: Equinox 80 APO
Mount: Celestron Nexstar 8SE
Other components: Flattener, Dell Laptop tethered to camera for easier focussing and EOS Utilities to control camera. 12V hairdryer to combat dew which built up occasionally.
Capture method:
189 frames each being 3.2 seconds - 10 minutes total exposure time.
ISO 1600
50 Dark frames
20 Bias frames
Post Processing:
Stacked with Deep Space Stacker,
Levels and curves adjustment in PS to bring out colour an details. No masking done, all adjustments applied globally.