This is a joint effort between my Dad and I. He used his *istDL2 DSLR to take 8 frames of the Orion Nebula (M42) using his 8" F5 newtonian telescope as the lens. I then used Hugin and Registax 3 to align and stack the images to produce what you see here.



we are still refining the technique for aligning the polar axis of the telescope so there is still a certain amount of stretching out of the stars, but its pretty good for 20 second exposures at 1000mm I think.

Shame you dont have an equatorial mount handy - still, thats a damn good effort, beats mine by a long chalk

Shame you dont have an equatorial mount handy - still, thats a damn good effort, beats mine by a long chalk

it is in fact on a motor driven equatorial mount, but we dont have a polar alignment scope so seting it up is a bit hit and miss. We figured out a better way to do it on Sunday but it promptly clouded over.

thanks for the comments guys. Hoping to get some pretty impressive planetary shots when the planets start making an apearance in the evening skys again.

Ive just gone and got myself a Telescope from Lidl, £50 for a 700mm refractor, from what Ive heard they seem to be quite good for beginners which is what I am.

So Im wondering how I go about connecting my D50 to it, Ive seen these on ebay - F-Adaptors and sounds like itll do the job as it should screw onto my 18-55mm kit lense as its got a 52mm thread on it.  All good except its not an IF lense so itll spin, so whats a good lense for this sort of thing?

If I get one of those adaptors I should be able to connect up one of the other cameras weve got lying about at home, A Canon A430 or a Sony Cybershot DSC-P10.

An F adaptor is what you want

700mm for £50? I think you made a mistake somewhere, like an extra zero, or using length of telescope rather than diameter of objective lens

Lol yeah just had a better look at it now, it is a 70mm objective lens.

Looking about on the net I think Ill need a T-adaptor as well, so itll go -

D50 -> T-adaptor -> F-adaptor -> Telescope

Just not sure if itll all connect together properly.

Just ordered both adaptors off that site, thanks Mongoose.

Hopefully the weather might start clearing up a little soon and Ill acutally be able to use it.

The only thing I need now is that one of the screws for aligning the spotting scope was broke when I got it, but it was the last telescope that Lidl had so no chance of a swap.  Shouldnt be too hard to find a screw though...