IC 434 & NCG 2024 2016_01_07 P1
Jan, 2016Views
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
This is part of the Orion complex taken from my back yard observatory. It features a number of nebulae including the flame nebula and the famous Horsehead nebula most of the main nebulae in this image are around 1300 light years away. For scale the dark Horsehead is estimated to be around 3.5 light years across, that's about the distance between our solar system and the nearest star.Time
This image was taken over several nights in January 2016 over several hours per session at my latitude Orion is quite prominent between 7pm and 2pm which is when this will have been taken.Lighting
Lighting all from the stars and surrounding nebulae, to combat local light pollution the camera has a CLS filter (City Light Suppression).Equipment
This image was taken using a Canon EOS 60Da, Skywatcher Esprit 80 ED Pro (400mm f5) with a field flattener. The images several hours to take so the tripod was Skywatcher NEQ6 Goto mount guided by computer control system which essentially locks on to a single star to negate the Earth's rotation.Inspiration
Many years ago I saw a black and white photo of the Horsehead taken by the Palomar observatory, then one of the largest telescopes in the world. I always wanted to view it for myself, it's possible with a big enough telescope but these days what can really bring out the detail is a modern DSLR, telescope, guiding system and a lot of patienceEditing
This is a stacked image of around 30 images each 8 minutes in exposures, to remove vignetting and other imaging artefacts there were also 10-15 'flat' frames per session and a set of dark and bias frames to reduce noise. The whole set was combined in PixInsight to boost signal to noise ratio and bring out the details before a histogram stretch and boost to saturation to restore colours.In my camera bag
For astrophotography usual kit is Canon EOS 60Da, optimised for astrophotography, CLS filter, tracking mount (Skywatcher NEQ6 or iOptron CEM 120) and a range of telescopes from the 80mm used here up to a 300mm (aperture) Newtonian. I usually make use of a guide scope which is basically an 80mm widefield scope with a USB camera.Feedback
Main thing is a good tracking mount that has been polar aligned correctly, this can be done with a small tracker and 300mm telephoto to take long enough exposures to get the details without the stars blurring. After this a few hours are needed for image integration and processing, it's a lot of work but those photons have been travelling a long time the least you can do is take a bit of effort to process them to show them at their best.
