Hi all

It’d been almost 6 months since doing any prime focus astrophotography through the ED80, and I was keen to shake off the cobwebs before IISAC2008. It was also my last chance to make sure all my equipment worked before packing it all away for travelling – I’d recently purchased a Belkin USB-Serial adapter, since my serial port had stopped responding on the laptop meaning I couldn’t use ImagesPlus to control the 350D long exposures, and this was the first chance to test that the adapter worked in the field.

I’m happy to report that everything worked as planned. No technical glitches, no equipment failures. It was a beautiful, clear night on Saturday night/Sunday morning and I used the opportunity to capture some data of the Great Orion Nebula (M42) as it rose in the East.

The image is made up of about 90 minutes worth of data at 10 minute subs, ISO400 with the Canon 350D and ED80 with WO 0.8x reducer/flattener. Guiding of the EQ6 was performed using PHD software with a DMK21AU04 and an 80mm f/5 refractor. ICNR was used for dark frames. 15x 15s and 15x 90s subs were used for the core area.

The Great Orion Nebula and Running Man

ImagesPlus was used for calibration, aligning, stacking and DDP. Photoshop CS2 was used for final processing. 

I’m quite happy with the final result – but I was very out of practise with processing deep-space images. I’m sure there’s more that could be done with the data, but it’s not a bad way to ease back into it.

Given clear skies at IISAC2008 (here’s hoping!), I’m happy that the equipment is ready!

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1. The Orion Constellation
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