star pattern surrounding it, and can even be seen in the viewfinder
of the camera.
So I end up with a lot of photos of M42, especially when I'm trying
to get a feel for new equipment.
This is a tale of two images. These were taken on successive nights.
Same setup, same exposure time, everything.
The first night was unguided.
... and the second night was autoguided with my trusty ST-4.
This was kind of a test of the G-11 Gemini to see how good it could
perform without a guider.
The guided image is definitely better. But the unguided one is not too shabby.
A ho-hum version of M42. The FOV on Pumpkin is really too side for this target
(I had the whole Sword of Orion in the FOV. vertically.)
but I was having fun on the first night under the stars with the new scope, so I ripped off a single(!)
3min shot of this oh-so-easy target.
click here for a larger version.
Finally decided to try out Veronica (the 8" f/5 Newtonian) in the observatory, instead of the ED80.
The reflector has two distinct advantages over the ED80; first, it's about 2 f/stops faster
(f/5 vs f/7.5), so it sucks up light 4 times as fast (each f/stop has a 2x effect on exposure length)
second, its longer focal length (1000mm vs 600mm) will allow me to "zoom in" a little and hopefully
allow me to pick up some smaller targets.
However, Veronica weighs over 11lb more than the ED80, and I was worried how the mount would handle the extra load.
I guess having a 6" steel pier and 4' of concrete under the mount stiffens things up a bit; the AS-GT worked just fine.
This image was shot unguided; the mount hung in there for each 30sec exposure without skipping a beat.
Oh, I noticed one more advantage to the reflector while I was shooting: The mirror doesn't pass as much IR
as the refractor's lenses do, so the red channel didn't blow out as fast, despite all the extra light-gathering. Not bad.
Oh, last thing. This was on a night with a 16-day (that is, almost-full) moon. Whoa.
Click here for the fullsize image.
I added some more data to the original 1.17.2007 image (seen to the right).
It's a stack of 10x30sec, 10x2min, 4x4min, and 2x10min.
The shorter exposures were used to grab detail in the bright center of the nebula,
while the longer ones helped pick up all the outer faint nebulosity.
Turns out I hadn't been shooting with the IDAS LPS filter, too,
so I might have more detail to add to this later...
Never thought it would take this long to get back to M42...
click here for a larger version.
