I See Stars...

The Nebula In Orion's Sword.

The stars are streaked from the 6 sec exposure at 500mm (2 x 250mm) without any sky tracking.

With the naked eye this patch of sky only looks like a line of three dim stars.

 

I've got a telescope with a tracking mount. I just don't have the adapter to mount the camera to it.

What I was really trying to test was if the M4/3 sensor could pull up the colors of the Nebula that you can't make out by eye. At ISO 3200 this image started off pretty noisy, but I thought it cleaned up reasonably well.

 

Here are a couple of shots at 100mm (2 x 50mm) to give the other shot some context. These were taken earlier in the evening on another night so the sword is more nearly vertical than in the shot above.


The lower part of the Orion Constellation with natural levels of brightness about equal to night adapted eyesight.


The same area of the sky with a 30 sec long exposure showing many more stars and their colors.