Wonderful pic, sadly, it's a long way away, so I probably won't get to visit

Holy cow, that is beautiful work for an amateur using amateur gear under an ocean of atmosphere.

When I was a kid, I built an 8" Newtonian that was a very good telescope. Ground the mirror for many weeks of frustration, rare moments of elation when looking through my crude Foucault tester (toilet paper roll, aluminum foil, razor blade) as the mirror neared completion and I made whisper-thin corrections measured in angstroms. But even in an 8" scope, all one sees are wisps of light below the belt stars. Here is what one typically sees, and even this is a time exposure--my naked eye never saw color in the clouds.

Beautiful image! Any idea about the exposure, ISO and size of the telescope?

...Jerry

Love it....
Thanks for sharing to us!

Set

Beautiful......

[I]Any idea about the exposure, ISO and size of the telescope?[/I]

Edit: Taken with single four minute exposure through Celestron 11 and Canon XS camera at ISO 800 with an autoguider running the motor drive on the mount.

I'm pretty sure it was his Celestron. He has perhaps 15 telescopes, several of which he built himself. I'm not a telescope person, but he has been at it since we were kids and has become quite the amateur astronomer over the years:

... But even in an 8" scope, all one sees are wisps of light below the belt stars. Here is what one typically sees, and even this is a time exposure--my naked eye never saw color in the clouds.

I must disagree. I have poor low light eyesight, yet astronomy is one of my hobbies. Among my many scopes is a 12" Meade Lightbridge Dobsonian which has not seem much use. However previously I viewed the Orion Nebular in an 8" dob and could see a definite green color in it. I was somewhat surprised, since green is not the color you see in pics.

@brighterside.

[I]Among my many scopes is a 12" Meade Lightbridge Dobsonian which has not seem much use.[/I]

Sounds like you would be a perfect astronomy colleague for my brother! He thinks you can never have too many telescopes. Of course admitting you have a problem is the first step to getting help, and he's not there yet : )

That is a clever setup. No maintenance, platform isolated from the scope pier. But where to stand when observing? And more importantly, where to sit with a cup of hot chocolate while guiding?

If your brother is interested, I can offer a few stories about working my first job as a teen at Caltech. I was a go-fer for the department that maintained the Palomar and Mt. Wilson observatories. One night the astronomer allowed me to hold up my little 35mm Konica rangefinder camera to the Coude' eyepiece of the Palomar 200" telescope while it was tracking a guide star. I have that slide somewhere. I was allowed to look through the eyepiece for a few seconds--just a gigantic bright bluish blur, dancing around due to the atmosphere. The Coude' focus was used as a guiding device while the actual "photography" took place at the prime focus, as I recall (it was a looong time ago).

For many years the 200" scope (nearly 17 feet in diameter!) was the world's largest. One can get an idea of the size of the thing by noting the size of the observer in the lower-left part of the graphic, at the Coude' observation point.

Always the interesting things I learn about on this Vegas forum...

That's a nice photo of Orion and an example of what modern equipment allows an amateur to easily achieve. Today anyone with a small scope can make images that a couple of decades ago required the best of astronomical gear and skills. The Orion is very bright and you'll have noted that the centre is over-exposed in the image. The dynamic range is impossibly beyond single imaging equipment so the usual technique is to use masks to combine images of different exposure times. With binoculars you can easily see the Orion Nebula, but as a grey cloud and not in the colour and detail shown in the photo. If anyone wants to try just set your DSLR on a tripod with, say, a 135mm lens at f/2.8 800ISO, and take a set of 10s exposures (say 30). Align in Photoshop and add. Obviously won't be as detailed as one taken through astro equipment, but you might be surprised at what can be achieved. Play around with the length of exposure to find a compromise between star trailing and focal length. There is a lot in the night sky that you can photograph with a DSLR, especially when you mount it on a simple tracker.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/405342_3074378624480_1670821458_n.jpgOrion -M42[/link]
That image is a combination of 100s and 10minute exposures at F/6. In the centre you can just see 4 closely located stars known as the trapesium (almost lost in highlights). When looking by eye Orion is where we see the centre of the 3 stars making up Orion's sword (or the handle of the pot, as we see it), so that "star" is actually the nebula.

I'm impressed!

I see he used post and pier foundation for a quick getaway. Then when he loses interest in astronomy, he can use it as part of his deck. Like that's going to happen...

I stared at the stars (I like the alliteration) in both Kimberly's and Serena's photos but could not line them up. Then I flipped Serena's horizontally and rotated 90 degrees and BINGO!

Which one is back to front?

In space, which way is up? Rotation is a matter of convention and how you see things depends where you're standing. But I should have flipped mine because it is a mirror image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_NebulaM42 and M43[/link]

Sorry Serena, but your new link doesn't work.

Try that one.

Awesome!

I see a bright blue star which must be travelling towards us. I hope I am not around when it hits!

"But I should have flipped mine because it is a mirror image"

Image from a parallel universe, perhaps?

Nice. I got my PhD in astronomy studying young stars in Orion, so I declare this to be on-topic. :-)

Thank you, Dr. Chris, for your kind words : ) My brother sent me some pictures of the Pegasus I Cluster and the Crab Nebula or something like that, but it didn't look very crabby to me. I had an astronomy class as a science elective many years ago but I didn't progress any further than that.

Sometimes you have to use quite a bit of imagination to visualise why something has the name it does. but that doesn't apply to the https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200719233489251&set=a.1386042817140.2054814.1414115853&type=3&theaterTarantula Nebula[/link]
You will see the spider more easily if you dim it down: it is the bright gas around the centre of the nebula (as it appears in visual observing through a small telescope).

Serena, That's a spectacular shot!

Back in the 1960s, I did a bit of astrophotography (best shots where on a friend's 10" Cave reflector). I really wish I lived in an area where I could re-kindle this hobby - the East Coast of the US just has too much light pollution & haze (smog).

...Jerry