At long last...

After weeks of being battered by Atlantic storms I've just enjoyed some clear sky tonight and photographed The Great Orion nebula and Comet Macholz.

Haven't had time to process them, other than some cropping. I took a few shots of each and have some darks to play with. Though I used the LXD75 mount to track, the alignment wasn't perfect. I need to work on integrating tracking software (like Guidedog) into my system. I also have a t-mount bracket now and would like to get closer shots with prime focus too.

Both shots were taken with the Canon EOS300D with 200mm fixed focal length lens at F2.8 Exposure length was 60 seconds at ISO 1600.

[Addendum - M42 now processed as a stack of 3 in Registax 3]





The comet shows the faintest hint of a tail, pointing towards 10 o'clock.

very nice! :shock:

Nice work James

Hi James,
Great first shots, you cought alot of detail in the nebula, and a tail in the comet, interesting thing that the comet looks green, I took a number of images of the comet and they looked green also!. Comet Linear last year also looked green, maybe these 300D cameras somehow see comets as green ???

Did you piggyback the camera on a scope, I've found that tracking is the critical point when it comes to this kind of imaging

Yes, the camera was piggy-backed on the LXD75 mount, though the tube stayed in the house. I leave the cradle on the mount and attach the camera to the cradle.

I don't have enough time in this weather to bring the scope out and less to try out guiding software because the sky clouds over so quickly here. I'd really like to construct a pillar so that I can have most things set up in advance and then I can get a programs like GuideDog and DSLRFocus to make better photographs.

I see magnificent work on some of the Yahoo groups and know that it takes a lot of time to emulate it but Kerry's clouds enjoy preventing me.

Every photograph of Macholz that I've seen has been green so I guess Macholz most have a greenish tint though why I don't know. The absence of a prominent tail and the greenish tinge may suggest that it is not like previous comets that I have seen (Hale-Bopp and Haley).

After some processing I have a new shot of Macholz and a negative to bring out the contrast between coma and background.

Love the shots James!

The negatives of space photos do seem to bring more detail out of the pictures. Though, I notice the lack of tail detail in the negative of Maccholz.

Seanie.