Sky was mostly clear last night, so I tried another shot with my Nikkor 70-200/2.8E FL ED VR without sky tracker. This time around it was the Orion nebula.
f/2.8, 2s, ISO 1600
466 light frames (388 used), no dark/flat/bias frames, because, let's be honest here, 2s isn't really gonna show any hot pixels and the biggest concern is trails here anyway.
Frames came out overexposed, so probably should have picked 1s shutter time instead.
I'm considering getting a 150/750 Newton telescope including motor, more specifically the Omegon 150/750 EQ4.
Question: Will pictures come out significantly better than this, using the prime focus method? I'm asking because the pictures/videos I've seen on the web so far don't look much better than this.
EDIT: With my ever improving Photoshop skills I was able to turn it up another notch.
Looking good for somebody who just picked this up a short while ago nice job Thorsten.
Thanks Joseph, I put some more time and effort in - what do you think?
can you get anything more out of the blowout or is it cooked? the colors are awesome!! crazy that due to the travel of light we are only see the light projected from most likely millions of years ago and the current light is probably nothing like what your photographing ...that kind of science will make your brain hurt! haha just scrolled down now thats a badass shot considering its not coming from a billion dollar telescope
Nah, I studied physics, actually, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The funny stuff starts when you learn that these galaxies are not actually moving but that space itself is expanding, that space is curved around objects with mass and coupled with time somehow. I work in the software industry nowadays, but I watch physics videos on YouTube every now and then and it's amazing what theories seem to point to, for example that mass is an illusion (photon box), which in turn means that the photons themselves bend space apparently. Oh, and time may be an illusion, too. It's possibly all there already, past, present and future.
thats absolutely crazy!!!
remember you need a coma corrector if using newtonian, thats an extra $2-300 depending on the quality of the corrector. So the newtonian + corrector ends up being similar in price to a small refractor, which is much easier to use and does not require collimation. I'd recommend an Astrotech AT65ED or a WilliamOptics Zenithstar instead, and they are light enough to be used with a SkyGuider Pro or StarAdventurer Pro. But a used AVX or CEM25p would be significantly more capable as a mount. The EQ4 will have a lot of periodic error which will be problematic for longer exposures. The SkyGuider Pro and CEM25p have low PE
Got a Newton about 2 weeks ago and it's not as bad as all that. Took me 3 days to get a proper collimation (laser sucks, Cheshire rocks), but that's how you get to know your stuff. Shot this picture last week, it's quite decent considering that I got 40 frames only (technical problems after that and calling it quits, I had been at it for 6 hours straight already). Had huge issues with PHD2 that have since been resolved, but no clear skies yet. Coma isn't really an issue with a D850 (FF sensor @ 8256x5504 resolution, just crop where coma becomes noticeable) and on the plus side I don't have to worry about chromatic aberration and get tons of signal thanks to 8" aperture. As for the mount, an EQ5 will have to do for now, but will upgrade to an EQ6 next year I think.