This was my first attempt at long-time astrophotography and the tracking was not good, as is obvious from the elongated stars. The four stars in the trapezium are so bright that they form the irregular blob at the center of the nebula.
| Photographs were taken with a Nikon Coolpix 990 digital camera and a 20mm Plossl eyepiece with my f/15 7" LX-50 Meade Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope. The camera is set at f/2.5, 400ASA, focus at infinity, fine resolution, set at wide angle. The photograph was processed with Corel Photopaint 9 using contrast/brightness, intensity. Instead of taking a dark frame and subtracting pixel noise, I used the remove noise filter in Corel Photopaint. All of these are eyeballed for best iamge. |
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2/8/2002 11:50pm PST, single 30s exposure using electronic trigger
release. Temperature: 30oF. This was my first attempt at long-time astrophotography and the tracking was not good, as is obvious from the elongated stars. The four stars in the trapezium are so bright that they form the irregular blob at the center of the nebula. |
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