I See Stars...

[MajorMagee]

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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.

 

[jimr.pdx]

Darn good try - thanks for posting!

For a few bucks, make a barn-door mount (google it) and you'll be set. I took shots up to 2 minutes using one (that was my time limit before before boredom set in :smile but got some great comet images that way. Still, 250mm might be challenging even that way!

 

[MajorMagee]

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.

 

[MajorMagee]

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.

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

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