The Orion Nebula
After weeks of clouds and rain, we finally had a couple of clear nights. I dragged all the gear outside and setup in the near-gloom that passes for darkness within my light polluted suburb.
To the front of my residence are two street lights, to the north are 2-storey townhouses that block out the lower 30 degrees of the sky, my house is to the south-east, and the neighbour is to the south-west. So my visible bit of the sky is a strip running East to West, with a south-facing section that is more light pollution than stars. Let’s just say that trying to shoot anything wide-angle is not going to work at all well.
Buying a telescope and proper mount is not an option at the moment, so I am working away with the Star Adventurer, DSLR and a telephoto lens of reasonable quality. (I would like to invest in a 200mm f2.8 lens, but they are not cheap…)
Anyway, I decided to try my hand at imaging the Orion Nebula, given I had a clear view of it between about 10pm and midnight. (Before that time it was hidden by the house next door, and after that would be too close to all the light pollution and other house next door.)
One good thing did come out of all that - I got my polar alignment totally spot-on without needing to setup the PoleMaster. (The Android software is a steaming turd, so heading down the PoleMaster route will mean getting a laptop and lugging that around. No thanks.)
Given I was shooting through light pollution and a lot of atmosphere, I’m quite happy with the way this image turned out. I could still do a lot of work to bring out the detail and structure within the nebula and I might do that to see what I can achieve. Given the (relatively) short focal length I was using, I may not be able to do much more, anyway…
For fun, I thought I would have a go at imaging Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) and M42, an open globular cluster.
This one did not turn out as well as I’d hoped, so there’s always next time I am out and about at a location with a darker sky… Again, I could have done more to bring out the stars in the cluster. Maybe when I get some time to experiment with Affinity Photo’s capabilities.