M42 Quick and Dirty
December 29th, 2009
Taking any brief window for imaging as I am at present I managed to sneak an our of clear skies to take a few more images of M42. Guiding for once was working very well after adjusting the counter weights a little. I managed about 33 minutes of data. Each frame being 3 minutes at ISO800, aligned stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in pixinsight. The Moon was nearly full which reduced the image quality and my exposure time. For some reason I had a lot of colour issues when stacking in Iris, probably due to the addition of the CLS CCD filter. I will need to look into how to resolve that in future.
A slightly different processing from a stack with different options :
Imaging Setup
- Orion Optics 250mm F4.7 Reflector
- Vixen Sphinx SX Mount
- Canon EOS 1000D unmodified
- Astronomik CLS-CCD Filter
Guiding
- Vixen A70LF F12 Refractor
- Modified Phillips SPC900NC webcam
- 0.6x Focal Reducer
- Guidemaster
Images
- 11 x 3 minutes @ ISO800
- Darks and Flats x 15 each
- Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
- Processed in Pixinsight
Excellent photos. I’m thinking of buying a Canon 1000d, would you recommend it, I know it’s not as good as the 450d or 500d but i’ve a limited budget! You have got some good results from your 1000d – unmodified? Any thoughts?
Limited budget was my primary reason for selecting the canon 1000D, and discussion with other experienced astro photographers.
It has excellent noise levels and the ability to completely remote control the camera from a laptop, both of which put it high on my list.
The next step is to modify it which I’m hoping to do in the first half of this year.