Orion shots 01/09/03
Again using the Orion Tabletop Equatorial Mount with drive motor. This time I worked from a table which I leveled. I used a hand held GPS unit to obtain the best estimate for North and then did a quick pass at drift alignment as I was taking images. This seemed to help a great deal as I was able to use more focal length (130mm) and got pretty decent results. A close examination of the image shows oblong stars yet.
The following image is a 5 image stack of 2 minutes exposures at ISO 400 using Image Plus. I had my 35-350mm zoomed to 130mm and fstop at f4.5. I did try an exposure at ISO 1000, but the noise was really bad and I did not think the image improved much. With a little imagination, I think I can see a bit of the nebulosity around Alnitak which might be IC434 (Horsehead Nebula). However, my star chart shows that it should be below Alnitak and what I see is left of that star. Alnitak is the Bottom Right Star in Orion's belt.
I tried to use a dark frame taken on another night and it did not work. So, this image has not been dark frame calibrated. Shows the importance of taking dark frames at the same time you are doing the images.
I'm pretty pleased with this attempt given this is using raw camera gear and a cheap equatorial mount with equally cheap guide motor. An airplane passed thru one of the shots which I used in the IP stack.
And now a crop of the actual pixels captured for M42
