A Couple of Orions

Hi all

With Saturday night promising some clear skies, I decided to give the Star Adventurer a workout, it's been some time since I last had the opportunity due to one thing or another. I headed down to Glendalough in Wicklow, to the upper car park, this was my first time being out in the wilds alone, and I admit that I was a little apprehensive, I had originally planned to go down to the lake side, but decided to stay near the car, maybe the next time when I feel a little braver.

The conditions were good, yet there was a layer of very high cloud that came out in some of the images, I took about eighty images in total of Orion and Gemini, I haven't had a chance to process the Gemini images.

The first image shows the entire Orion constellation, it was shot with a Nikon D7000, Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 lens operating at 24mm, f/4 and ISO 1250. It is a stacked set of 20, 45 second shots.

www.flickr.com/photos/32880031@N03/16284984016/

I played around with the image of Photoshop and decided that it looked better in black and white, I would like to know what you think.

The second image is a close up of the belt and sword region, same camera and lens, operating at 70mm, same settings. There is one thing I was pleased with and one that I was annoyed with, I managed to capture the Flame Nebula, but also managed to leave Saiph out of the shot. :pinch: 20, 30 second images were stacked for this image.

www.flickr.com/photos/32880031@N03/16124761279/

Again I converted it to black and white, maybe it's because I like black and white images.

I am only just dipping my toe in the waters of astrophotography, and I know that it is a steep learning curve, I don't want to rely too much and post processing software, of course they have their uses, but as my second shot shows the importance of composing the image, no software can compensate for a star that is not in the shot.

A word about the Star Adventurer, I'm still learning the device, already I can tell that it is an excellent piece of kit, it is simple to set up, a doddle to use and it tracks beautifully, there is very slight elongation of the stars, this is down to a fault on my part, of that I'm sure. One thing I would recommend anyone buying the Star Adventurer is to buy a sturdy tripod, my camera tripod is fine, but I thing that it will be the first thing that replace for something beefier.

Thanks for your time and I really appreciate any tips or hints that you can offer to improve my images.

Paul

PS. I will also take any tips or advice to improve my courage, and no, I don't know anybody call the Wizard of Oz.

You started to pick up the detail of the Flame Nebula in the 2nd image, well done. You have to dip your toes in at some point before you take the plunge and dive right in

I noticed in the 1st image there's a gradient of light heading down towards the bottom left, I used to use a Plugin for Photoshop called Gradient XTerminator for getting rid of those types of gradients

Get into the habit of taking multiple exposures and stacking them, it helps bring out the detail and remove the "Random noise"