What's wrong with this pic?

HI ALL,

Kevin from galway here... HAPPY NEW YEAR AND HOPE YE ALL HAD GREAT CHRISTMAS!!!!

I have attached a pic of orion Nebula that i took couple weeks ago :
farm3.static.flickr.com/2118/1988584631_0cc6d0b519.jpg?v=0 ......

I think we can all aggree that it is rubbish!!!

Could you guys tell me where I went wrong???

DETAILS : This is a single exposure of 30sec adjusted... (I actually took 30X30sec and tried to stack but core completely blew out and any detail turned totally grainy)...Believe it or not, this is the best result either stacked or not...I used Canon 400d prime focus on Celestron 9.25" SCT..

thanks folks,

kevin

Hi Kevin,
Don't be so hard on yourself,
Did you have this star smearing on all 30 shots?
Your problem there appears to be tracking.
The core is never going to look right if the tracking is off.

Kevin its not rubbish at all. Agreed the tracking is off.

Also you have to get the stacking sorted. You cannot expect to get a really top picture from one single 30 second exposure. Dave L is right in that you need to be able to take shots without trailing before you can stack the shots.

I notice your trailing is in declination mostly. Therefore your mount is not polar aligned accurately enough. How did you polar align it?

Get the trailing issue sorted first then take it from there. You will really need to consider autoguiding if you harbour ambitions to take really decent deep sky images.

Kevin,

I found this article a while back and it is something you should read carefully. Lots of really good stuff in here.

www.samirkharusi.net/sub-exposures.html

Maygrey................

If you dont like the pic...can i keep it?

LOL.

I think its pretty damn good.

THANKS ALL,


I will have look at my tracking and have another go.... is a polar scope worth gettin??? and why does a polar scope not give as good allignment as drift method...( or does it??)

What stacking software do you guys use??? I know REGISTAX for stacking planitary work... and I use DEEPSKYSTACKER for deep sky..

Is registax any use for deep sky???

Cheers