Orion Jan 30 2019

The Orion Nebula is an easy target for me and my limited equipment and skill set.

The objective here was to try and show some of the faint dust and nebulosity that surrounds this star forming region. Also I attempted not to have the central region of the main nebula overly blown out.

 

I used four different exposures in this composite.

25 X 90 sec at ISO 1600

25 X 100 sec at ISO 2000 for the faint dust

12 X 60 sec at ISO 640

10 X 60 sec at ISO 320 for the innermost core of the nebula

 

To really show the faint dust I need longer exposures still, maybe around 2.5 or 3 minutes. But the star tracker has its limitations and it is very difficult for me to get clean, round stars beyond 100 sec. with my 200mm Takumar. 200mm x 1.6 crop factor makes a 320 mm lens and in my opinion that pushes the star tracker to its limits.

 

Canon 70D with Takumar 200mm f 4 manual lens stopped down to 5.6 in front of lens with stepdown rings.

IOptron startracker pro with counterweight.

Rigel systems star finder.

EOS utility for bulb timer and Canon DPP for quality checking on the fly.

All processing in Photoshop CS5 and some in Lightroom.

Done