A Double Whammy!

A clear night a couple of days ago so I had a crack at adding to my Andromeda data (individual photos). I used a different lens this time; my Canon f/4 70-200mm – usually attached to my 1d used for Sports work, rather than the Tamron 18-200mm that I use as a ‘kit’ lens with the 77d.

To be honest such a large lens is pushing it in terms of weight for the Nano Tracker which recommends only going up to 50mm, but I like to see how far I can push kit!

It took a while to locate and frame Andromeda (it’s not really visible except in perfectly clear skies) so it was a few minutes of trial and error taking 2sec shots at max ISO and viewing the shots. Once framed, I switched on the mount, reset the camera to Bulb with ISO at 1600, then set the intervalometer to shoot a few hundred at 15secs.

I captured another 400-odd frames of Andromeda before attempting to re-frame a bit and completely losing where the galaxy was! I couldn’t be bothered to spend ages searching for it again, so turned my attention to Orion which was looking stunning. Once I’d shot a few frames I realised it was going behind some trees, so took everything indoors and shot it from an upstairs window. I really wanted to get in closer to the Fire Nebula (NGC2024) and hoped I might just about see the Horsehead (B33) too. 200 frames (50 minutes total) of Orion, a set of calibration frames and I called it a night.

I didn’t expect this to result in anything amazing, but if the outcome was reasonable I’d have another go at adding to the data another night.

Next day, I set Deep Sky Stacker going on the 700-plus Andromeda shots. The whole process took hours, but once done I started processing and after a couple more goes, I ended up with the image below. Much more colour and detail, still a bit noisy (grainy), but pretty happy with it. Maybe another night shooting to add even more data!

So then it was about seeing what I could get from the Orion images. DSS stacked them again and I imported the result into Photoshop. I could already make out the Flame in the unprocessed stacked image and after the first bit of processing and was able to just about see the Horsehead. But it wasn’t too clear, so left it for another day.

Second try at it today and whoa! Some different processing techniques and I was able to bring out the Horsehead really nicely (it looks more like a dark Loch Ness Monster I think, but you can clearly see it below the main star Alnitak, kind of laying on its back. The Flame is the brighter nebula to the left. So very pleasing and definitely will add to this data when skies clear again!