The Orion Nebula

Got my autoguiding gear the other day and had clear skies the night of December 30th so I set out to shoot an easy target, the Orion Nebula and its neighbors, the de Mairan's Nebula and the Running Man Nebula.

The new set up uses the ASIAIR Mini to manage the autoguiding, the ASI120 Mini guide camera on the ZWO 30F4 MiniScope to control my iOptron SkyGuider Pro on a William Optics High Latitude Vixen Base Mount that adjusts better than the mount that comes with the SkyGuider. Also added in a couple of dew heaters. The new set up without the wires and the mini computers:

Went with the RF 100-400 f/5.6 - 8 IS USM this time to zoom in more than my previous shots. Still the R6mkII. Rather than use the ASIAIR Mini to control the shooting itself, I used my trusty old intervalometer and use that yellow velcro strip to stick it to the tripod.

The first problem was trying to focus the guide camera and scope. It didn’t help that to better balance things it ended up closer to the mount than in that picture and the wires got in the way. I did get it close enough finally though. Will probably take just the scope out on some reasonably clear night to get a good focus, mark the rough spots on it so that’s all faster in the future.

I did a rough polar alignment through the polar scope on the star tracker and then did the final adjustments using the ASIAIR Mini and the R6mkII. That went pretty well as long as I started out with the William Optics mount pointed higher than it needed to be. The adjustment screws make taking it back up with all that weight on things a bit tough. But starting high and working my way down in small increments worked great. Then I turned things towards the Orion Nebula.

I got the nebula in the field of view where I wanted it and did my test shots and then turned to starting the autoguiding. I definitely need to make myself a crib sheet on that part. Went back in to watch the tutorials a couple of times. Not sure if messed things up or bumped things out of alignment because the nebulas did drift across the view a bit over time. Not enough to mess up any single exposure though. Will probably do some autotracking set up practice when I set up the focus on the autoguide scope and see how it tracks after doing it.

Had planned on doing an hour’s worth of 2-minute exposures, do about 20 2-minute darks and another hour’s worth of 2-minute exposures. The first set and the darks worked fine, then clouds came in and prevented the second hour. But I did get 30 good shots at f/8 ISO 1600. PixInsight rejected 3 of them but still, 54 minutes of exposures worked well. Individually the shots mostly looked like this:

Stars weren’t pin points (another indication I may have messed up the autoguiding or the polar alignment) but usable. The light pollution, as usual, was terrible but the backyard is easy to get to.

I stacked the images in PixInsight for a total of 54 minutes total exposure and then processed the stack to get:

All in all a very successful session. I learned some lessons, identified some things to work on and got a great image of the nebulas.