Orpington Astronomical Society

Astronomy => Astrophotography => Topic started by: MarkS on Jan 01, 2017, 09:48:54

Title: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: MarkS on Jan 01, 2017, 09:48:54
I shot this on Boxing Day evening after treating the family to live view demonstration displayed on a TV set - Orion, Flame and Horsehead Nebulae followed by the Pleiades.

The image is a mosaic of 4 pieces, each piece is 50min total integration time 100 x 30sec at ISO 10000.
As usual it's the Sony A7S on the Tak Epsilon.

(http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/2016/orion_belt_sword_20161226_small.jpg)

Larger version here: http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/2016/orion_belt_sword_20161226.jpg

The interior of the Orion Nebula was "borrowed" from a previous image.  I really need some shorter exposures to control the brighter stars a bit better.

Mark
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: Carole on Jan 01, 2017, 10:24:56
Absolutely beautiful

Carole
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: RobertM on Jan 01, 2017, 10:55:52
That very impressive Mark.  You must have had some very good skies to produce that.

Are you finding ISO 10000 more usable or is it just to get the histogram in the right place ?

Robert
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: MarkS on Jan 01, 2017, 11:09:58
Quote from: RobertM
That very impressive Mark.  You must have had some very good skies to produce that.

Are you finding ISO 10000 more usable or is it just to get the histogram in the right place ?

Thanks. The sky was actually slightly worse than average that night with an SQM reading of 20.7 instead of the usual 20.8-20.9 
On a good night (e.g. 21.2) it would have definitely been a better image.

I'm using ISO 10000 to get the back-of-camera histogram to the right of centre, which is the only way to avoid that problem with the horizontal coloured bands on the left hand side of the split sensor.

Mark
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: JohnP on Jan 03, 2017, 08:12:45
unbelievable Mark - superb as usual.. still waiting for the book ;-) John
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: Mac on Jan 03, 2017, 12:56:44
hmmmm that look fantastic especially on my new 5k monitor,   :cheesy:

Mac
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: julian on Jan 03, 2017, 14:41:50
Another great image Mark.
Put me down for a book   :cheesy:
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: The Thing on Jan 03, 2017, 20:14:48
I've lurked on this posting for a couple of days now as I can't think of a fitting superlative. So I'll just say really really nice image Mark.
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: MarkS on Jan 04, 2017, 06:40:44
Thanks everyone for your kind words.

Certainly there are tweaks here and there that will improve it further but other than that, this is an image I'm really pleased with.

Mark
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: Kenny on Jan 08, 2017, 21:15:56
Another fantastic image. Absolutely stunning.
Title: Re: Mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword
Post by: MarkS on Jan 09, 2017, 06:09:35
Quote from: Kenny
Another fantastic image. Absolutely stunning.

Thanks Kenny.  This is a Winter project I've waited a few years to do.  After 2 disastrous Winters (from a cloudy nights point of view) we finally have a Winter where there has been a few clear nights :)

Ideally I'd like to do a mosaic of the whole Orion Constellation but I know I'll never get sufficient clear nights for that!  So I made do with that image taken with a lens in the other thread.

Mark