My first Deep sky object

This is my very first image of a nebula taken in 2022. At the time of taking this image I had very limited knowledge of not only my equipment but on how to process any deep sky object images.

But I soldiered on. At the time when I processed this, I was amazed. I was blown away with how this turned out, even though looking back, it is pretty ropey to say the least.

At the time my equipment was quite modest to be fair, but I had the same OTA (optical Tube assembly) or telescope that I have now.

My software for acquiring objects was a little different though and the camera I used to capture this image wasn’t a cooled dedicated astronomy camera that I have now.

I remember getting so excited about taking this image, my first proper DSO (Deep Sky Object) and I always admired other astrophotographers taking astonishing images of space, and to be fair I think I probably expected this one to be of similar quality.

Of course, it wasn’t. But that said the feeling of taking some short exposures of this image, that you can actually see with your naked eye.

Orion sits just underneath the ‘belt’ in the constellation of Orion, probably one of the most recognisable constellations in our night skies.

It is seems as a small fuzzy blob in my Bortle 4 skies in my local area, but even so, you can see it.

From my memory I think this was only a single exposure of around 30 seconds. At the time I didn’t really know about stacking, and I will talk abbot this in a later blog post maybe.

But most of us who take part in this hobby, will never forget the first time we take an image of an object in space, I certainly will never forget this one!