Orion Nebula & Andromeda

Some of you who have kept up with some of my posts may of seen me mention that my love of Photography was originally astro photography. Until a few weeks ago i had not seriously got into terrestrial photography, 80% of my previous photographs taken were just made up of holiday snaps. A lot of patience was needed when taking astro photos, patience when it came down to the weather, very few opportunities due to wall to wall cloud for weeks on end, no good imaging during the summer months either due to the short nights, and the heat at night during the summer months, messes with the atmosphere and messes with getting the telescope cooled down enough and camera staying hot which is never good for the final images. On top of that the battle with light pollution. The hobby of astrophotography is not an easy one, but all the time and effort put in can be rewarding like with terrestrial photography.
Sadly i had to give it up completely back in 2009 due to family issues, hence me becoming a full time carer.
I do miss the cold winter nights spending hour after hour outside imaging, equipment like the telescope freezing up, those were the days,lol.

Going through some of my images over an 18 month period earlier tonight i thought i would share a couple of images with you all. Now they are far from being hubble imaging quality but i like them all the same.

Image 1 : The Orion Nebula - Orion is one of the most well known and noticeable constellations in the Winters night sky, especially Orions belt and Sword. Half way down the sword, within the 2nd pair of noticeable stars is the Orion Nebula. Its a region where new stars are born, the closest star forming region to Earth, saying that its still 1,344 ± 20 Light years away from earth. 1 Light year is the equivalent of 5,878,625,373,183.608 Miles.



This image was made up of approximately 25 x 30 second images stacked with dark frames (Dark frames used to take out dark signal caused when imaging using DSLRs or CCD cameras) and then processed in PS E6.
Equipment - Modified Canon 350D mounted onto a Skywatcher 250px 10" scope on an EQ5 Mount.

The Power of a Lens

As with any type of photography, with the right equipment, great things can be achieved, my 2nd image is of the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large galaxy to our Milkyway. With the EQ5, once aligned properly to the polar star, you are able to track objects across the night sky with ease, the more accurate the alignment, the longer the lens can stay open, grabbing more data in the process.
Now with this image, instead of mounting the camera onto the scope to use the scope as a lens, i piggybacked the camera onto the scope and used my Sigma 75mm - 300mm lens. After taking 18 x 180 second images with darks and flats i ended up with this.



Not bad for a 300mm lens i would say To get a more decent image of Andromeda approx 2 to 3 hours of data is needed.

Andromeda is approximately 2.5 million light years away from our little planet and ranks as one of the furthest objects taken with such a small lens.

Finally (If anybody is still awake at this point). The furthest galaxy i have imaged using the 350D and the 10" scope was the Mice Galaxies, which are a mere 290 million light years away from us, albeit the image was very very faint, literally just a couple of pin pricks on the screen with a tail showing up on one of the galaxies. its just Mind boggling when you think about it.

Any comments, Questions more than welcome

These are great Mark. I love looking up at a clear sky and wondering.

Wow, what a great read and some wonderful shots too. I must confess to a passing interest in astro photography and would love to have a go if I had the spare time & money, but unfortunately I have to many hobbies now.

A fantastic post L'n space

Thankyou Dave and Ken

It can be a very expensive hobby for anybody wanting to go down the road of astrophotography, for a half decent set up you could be looking in spending £4000+, even though the scopes are fairly cheap, its the imaging equipment that can be costly, A modified DSLR is possibly the cheapest option, but it has its limits. The other option is a CCD camera (Charged Coupled Device), these can start off cheap but run into the £1000`s for a decent one. Choosing the right scope can be hard too, so many to choose from, not every scope good for imaging, i have 2, a 5" which i used the other week for terrestrial (F11) and the 10" which is about F4.7, the smaller scope is all but useless for imaging, its just not fast enough, but sharp when observing and it has a decent field of view, the larger scope is a lot faster but has a smaller field of view, great for smaller targets but no good for larger galaxies like Andromeda, as you cannot get all of Andromeda in the FOV.
The other issue is time and weather, best time of year is winter to observe, due to the longer nights, staying up late is not that necessary, although this limits you to what targets you can image, many might not come into view until early morning so lots of late nights needed.
Its the beauty of things like Nebulas, and being able to image distant galaxies and at the same time learn about these galaxies, nebulae, star clusters, asterisms that simply blows you away, it makes you wonder how unique planet earth is and if there is other life out there somewhere, one thing we will never find out really and its a question that will always remain unanswered, nobody can definitively say yes or no.
Especially when you think, in our Galaxy there are between 2billion and 4 billion stars, and there are 10`s of millions of galaxies, and they say more stars than grains of sand on the earth.

These are amazing, I'm another one that loves looking up at the sky at night, although i know nothing about astronomy, we are quite lucky here as we don't get a lot of light interference, but when we lived on board a boat that was one of the most truly wonderful experiences, was the sky on a clear night out at sea

Thanks Kay.
I have only witnessed completely dark skies once, last year when we were away on holiday at a riverside cottage in Wales, middle of nowhere, truly breathtaking, sadly we did not witness the dark skies this year like we did last year as the moon was very prominent on the nights it was clear whilst we were away so it washed out the starlight. Looking at the night sky whilst at sea is going one better, especially on calm nights, probably feels like starlight is all around you with the reflections on the water as well. Think it would be a little difficult observing or imaging on the water with the boat bobbing about

Fantastic shots....Who would think you could get pics like that with a 300 lens..

Thanks Yorki. It did help being able to track the targets with the EQ5 mount, without tracking its impossible to get an image without trails. A good image to be had without tracking is a star trails image. If you have a compass, and remote for the camera find north and then point your camera up at the pole star `Polaris`. With the camera on the bulb setting take an exposure of around 4 minutes.......The darker it is around you the better, no street lights and no house lights. And no moonlight either. If done correctly the result is great