I find it amazing that these things are above our heads all the time and this one is fairly close in galactic standards, the Orion nebula is located around 1344 light years away so everything you can see in this photo i have taken happened around 678 AD, i did have a look at what happened that year of wikipedia but not much interesting happened but as far as i can see England was still not united and the Byzantine empire was still a dominant power.
The images are captured in a piece of software called sharpcap, each image is 2 mins long and in the final image there is 1 hour of data, the image is stacked in deepskystacker and processed in startools.
This is my rig at the moment and i will run down a list of everything on it with a cost if buying from new.
Mount - Celestron Advanced VX mount (£979 tring astronomy) This is where most of the money should go for astrophotography as you need to track really well.
Saddle Bar - William optics dovetail bar, this is the bar that mounts the telescope to the mount these are around £38 but i cant find it at the moment but quality here reduces flexture which can help imaging.
Telescope - Skywatcher 72ed, this is a starter scope for imaging with a fast focal length but a small apeture, it is great for brighter objects. I wish i had gone for a different refractor but i may revisit this in 18 months. (£329 first light optics)
Field Flatener - OVL field flatener, this is a must when using a cheaper scope as it reduces field curviture. It is not designed for this scope but works ok. (£81 Rother Valley Optics)
Extension tube - SVbony m42 extension tubes to reach the correct back focus between camera and field flattener. £29 amazon - ok but some of the threads are a bit rough at first.
Astronomy Camera - A lot of people would use a DSLR but i feel you get more control with a dedicated astro camera, i use an Altair 183c pro cooled camera. There are two versions and i really wish i had gone for the TEC cooled as taking dark frames can be a pain when you only have passing cooling. This camera is still good but amp glow is a pain and the sensor size aint the biggest but it is still good for the money. (£499 Altair Astro)
Guide Scope - SVbony SV165 mini guidescope, this is used to make sure the tracking of the stars is kept spot on, this is cheap and cheerful but i am super happy with this. (£55 amazon.co.uk)
Guide Camera - SVbony 305 pro, i bought this for imaging but i found it useless but i do love it as a guidecope but i feel i could have done better for my money with a mono camera. (£195 amazon.co.uk)
Dew heater straps - These work of USB to keep the lens warm so dew does not form, these are £20 each (£40 amazon.co.uk)
Powered USB hub - ABLEWE 6-Port USB Hub , this cuts down on the ammount of cables going to the laptop and i also power the dew heaters off this. A great buy in my opinion and runs off 12v (£29 amazon.co.uk)
Cables around £15 for 3 x USB 3.0
Software
Sharpcap - Used to capture the images £12 a year
PHD2 Guide Software £0 free
Deepskystacker Used to combine images £0 free
Startools used to processed combined images £40 (if you dont have the money for pix insight i would reccomend this software.
GIMP image processing £0 free, power bit of kit but not as good as Photoshop, this is used for last little image tweaks.
Total of £2331 for this setup if buying from new but a lot of this i bought used but it stil aint cheap and mastering everything is the real fun.
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