Old Faithful

Or M42 as it really likes to be known.

In the constellation of Orion, barely visible to the naked eye unless you are well out of a light polluted area. If you look through binoculars, you can see a bit of a smudge in the sky, in the area under Orions belt (I think in the bit of the constellation that is supposed to be his sword hanging from his belt).

However, with a 6 inch diameter telescope, 750mm length, a 2x barlow for magnification and the trusty Canon acting as an eyepiece, this is what you get. It's the best one I have done of it so far - still not pin sharp, but it's probably as good as I am going to get. I need to save up for a 10 or 12 inch scope....that's a few years off I suspect!

What I am pleased with is the amount of nebulosity that I have managed to capture - have tinkered around with curves a little bit, but the original shot actually had picked up the shades of pink/blue/red to an extent. Have denoised as well as 30 seconds on 1600 ISO made it super grainy.

That's that.

I also managed to get scope perfectly aligned tonight so I have had some pretty decent viewing of Jupiter, Venus and Mars as well as a few other objects. I also saw a meteor trail across my line of sight just as I was viewing in the area of Andromeda...gutted that the camera wasn't running.

If it's decent tomorrow night, I am comet hunting - there's one lurking near Ursa Major at the moment and if I am patient, I should be able to find it.


In other news:
I smiled at my husband today. I think he thinks his wife has been abducted!