The Orion Nebula

Well, I'm just about recovered from the all nighter on Saturday.
I'm going through some of the shots I got and doing some
quick processing.

This one is of M42 I took with the ETX 125 OTA on an Astrotrac.
It's 4 shots stacked in Registax with a bit of level adjusting in
Photoshop.
It's a bit faint and noisey but you'd expect that form just a stacked
shot without darks and flats applied.
Focus may be a tad off too..

I took a series of 10, 20, 30 & 40 second exposures
along with darks and flats so I'll process all that when it's
flogging rain one night and my head is in the right place for it.

Also I've tried Deep Sky Stacker but all I'm getting for an end
image is a very washed out monotone grey image.
Anyone know why this may be the case?

Anyway it's my first attempt at getting a reasonably
large image of a DSO.

www.frankryanjr.com/M42_small.jpg

Thats a grand shot there Frank,
What exposure time was that image ?
Whats the max amount of exposure time do you get before trailing with this scope on the astrotrack ?

Exposure time was 1min 15 sec for each of the 4 images
at ISO 1600.

It's all down to how accurately you polar align it.
For the shot above it was just a quick (2min) polar align.
If I do an accurate polar align and shoot through the ETX125 OTA
I can squeeze 3 min tracking without trailing.
It has to be dead calm though, any wind at all and your sunk.