M42 The Orion Nebula in Orion

Date: 11/4/2010

Location: Tierra Del Sol, California

Conditions: 0% moon, seeing 4/10, transparency 4/10, temperature 58 F, wind 8 - 15 mph..

Telescope: Canon 24-105mm L series lens, 55mm @f4, mounted on Kirk ball head

Mount:AstroTract, provided polar scope used to polar align.

Camera: Canon EOS 7D

Focusing: Manual on Jupiter. LIVE FOCUS with 10x magnification used on camera viewer.

Exposures: (6) 4 min raw 1600 ISO, (0) darks, (0) bias, (0) flats

Processing: Images Plus 3.82 - Used automatic image set processing to convert raw to a fits file, normalized,graded, aligned, and combined using min-max, performed digital development, color saturation & brightness, gradient removal, smoothing, cropping, converted to JPEG. Use Photoshop CS5 for final sharping and optimizing for web.



Comments: This was the first night I used my AstroTract mount. I am quite happy with the tracking and my polar alignment was not bad. This is going to be a great small pick up and go mount for imaging wide field and some deep sky objects with my Canon 7d and the associated lens I have with it. Finding deep sky objects in the view finder however is very challenging.

M42 The Orion Nebula in Orion

Date: 1/24/2007

Location: Vallecito County Park, California

Conditions: 0% moon, seeing 7/10, transparency 8/10, temperature 75-55 F, very dry night.

Telescope: Canon 70 - 200 mm F series lens photo at 200mm

Mount: Losmandy G11, Gemini goto, polar scope used to align, rough drift alignment with C8

Camera: Canon Rebel 300d

Focusing: Manual on star using auto focus feature of Canon lens and then returning to manual focus mode.

Exposures: (5) 3 min raw 800 ISO, (4) 4 min raw, 800 ISO

Processing: IP 2.75 - converted raw to FITS, calibrated with 3 dark frames, graded, align-rotate, combine median average, digital development, convert to 16 bit TIFF, PS CS , levels, curves, color saturation, cropped, converted to 8 bit JPEG, Noel Carboni tools used, and final smoothing with Neat image.

Comments: Lots of room for improvement. I did 15 sec & 30 sec for over laying the trapezium but need to to study on how to do it. The running man does show up nicely in the upper left.

M42 The Orion Nebula in Orion

Date: 10/21/2006

Location: Vallecito County Park, California

Conditions: 0% moon, seeing 7/10, transparency 8/10, temperature 75-55 F, very dry night.

Telescope: Televue 85mm refractor, 600mm focal length, F7, prime focus, no diagonal.

Mount: Losmandy G11, Gemini goto, polar scope used to align, rough drift alignment

Camera: Canon Rebel 300d

Focusing: Manual on star using right angle Canon 2.5 magnifying view finder.

Exposures: (2) 2 min raw 800 ISO, (4) 4 min raw, 800 ISO

Processing: IP 2.75 - converted raw to FITS, dark frame calibrated, graded, align-rotate, combine median average,. digital development, convert to 16 bit TIFF, PS CS , levels, curves, color saturation, cropped, converted to 8 bit JPEG, Neat image.

Comments: Lots of room for improvement. I did 15 sec & 30 sec for over laying the trapezium but need to to study on how to do it. The running man does show up nicely in the upper left.