Orion's Belt And Nebulae

SignifDigits — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 13:45:27 GMT

I decided to try some of my Christmas presents last night and am sharing my first effort at astrophotography. Hopefully it might encourage others to try it. It was fun! This was my second set of shots. For my first set of shots I noticed star trails - oh yeah, that Rule of 500 - headsmack - doh! This is 59 stacked images at 200mm, f/2.8, 1.3 seconds.

The polar alignment of the tracker probably took the longest. Hopefully I will get faster at that. Batch processing to JPEG and stacking was a close second. I just used the quick version of stacking software in default mode. No registration, images, etc. The shooting, using the 2 second delay, the shot then an additional 5 seconds for saving (used 10 seconds to round it off and make the math easier for me), took just 10 minutes on autopilot.

It was a fun way to spend a bit over an hour on a clear night.

Moving Parts (besides the R6 Mark ii) - EF 70-200mm F/2.8L Is III USM, DPP (batch conversion), DeepSkyStacker (stacking), Luninar Neo (coloring), Move Shoot Move Nomad tracker, VEO 3+ 263P tripod.

Other than the tracker and software this was just standard multiple use photography gear put to use for a new (for me) application. If you've thought of trying it, this gives you some idea of the difficulty and results from a total astrophotography newbie.

Of course I drew upon the internet for settings and advice, etc. That part - the education and setup - was actually the most time-consuming, but the education was interesting. I don't typically shoot in in Kelvin degrees white balance, and turn off long exposure and high ISO noise reduction.

I used SkyView Lite on my Android phone for locating Polaris and the Orion Nebula.

I tacked on a SOOC moon pic I took this AM to keep the moonie theme alive 🙂 It seemed appropo and the timing during the sunrise caught the sky at a lovely color.

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Orion's Belt And Nebulae