M42 - Wide FOV

[JohnP]

I played around with IRIS last night for the first time & decided to do an uncropped version of my M42 image showing the full FOV I get with the EOS. I looked at IRIS previously & it was a programing nightmare (not user friendly at all) The new version has direct support for RAW files from digital camera (EOS at least) & the programming is a lot easier - almost windows friendly. The attached is the same 10 images stacked & aligned & stacked in Iris with minimal adjustment in Photoshop.

Cheers,  John

[Rocket Pooch]

Like wow!

[Ian]

the pic has captured a lot of the nebula usually missing, excellent.

how did you get on with focus? or is the lens correctly marked for infinity?

[JohnP]

Hi Ian,

I have purchase some s/w called DSLR focus - I connect my camera to my laptop using a USB cable - When I run the focus software it basically takes an image (low reolution) & downloads it to the PC. You then select a suitable star in the image using a box. The s/w analyzes the star i.e. diameter, brightness, width verses height (i.e. how round it is)- You adjust focus & then grab another image. This image is compared with the last (you can check numbers & graphs etc.) to make sure focus is improving. You continue this way until best focus is achieve. The procedure is the same whether you are focus using a lens or through a telescope.

Link to s/w is:

http://www.dslrfocus.com/

I've also made up a small interface lead to the parallel port on my laptop & use the same s/w for capturing the images (sequences of images).

All in all it's quite painless - A lot easier than trying to use the viewfinder...

Cheers,  John

[Rocket Pooch]

Ian,

The lens was my Skywatch 80mm F5.  Great shot isn't it, you should have seen the fog and sky glow John had.