Orion widefield

[1DegreeN]

This is my first serious attempt at astrophotography - Orion's belt showing the Flame and Horsehead nebulae, with M78 at top left; secondly the M42 region - this being cropped from the widefield original. Both were taken using an unmodified Canon 650D with EF200mm lens and an Astrotrac mount for tracking, while on holiday last month in Thailand at a great location near Chiang Mai. Was lucky to have a couple of clear nights with dark skies, made lots of mistakes on the first night but managed to salvage these on the second. 15 subs of 120s for the Belt and 15 of 30s for M42. I used BackyardEOS for the capture and PixInsight for the post processing.


Orion's Belt


M42 by js19pv, on Flickr

cheers
John

[Airconvent]

A unique perspective of a famous object..Thanks for sharing, John!...and welcome to Singastro too.

[orly_andico]

wow.. nothing but nothing beats pristine skies.

[antares2063]

Thailand always look clear and relatively cloudless on the NEA weather satellite image..(dreaming)

[Gary]

Beautiful shots. Thanks for sharing. Welcome to the forum!

[1DegreeN]

Thailand does seem to be mostly cloud free during the dry season (from around December to March/April), if you can get far enough away from the major urban areas the skies can be really good. We were lucky to be at a home-stay in the hills east of Chiang Mai. No mobile phone signal, no internet and, on the second night, a power cut in the area - but plenty of stars. One more shot to share: this is a very widefield view of Orion taken with the standard Canon EF-S 18-55 kit lens, at 25mm and f5.6. 15x60 seconds. Its not that great but puts the previous two shots in context. I'm not sure it will be visible on this snap but on the original the Flame is quite obvious and there's even a hint of the Horse.


Orion Widefield by js19pv, on Flickr

It will be another year before I can back over there - but it will probably take me that long to master PixInsight.

John

[acc]

Beautiful shots!

[lqx]

Love the widefield!!