The Crowned Jewel of the Winter Skies

One of the most common misconceptions in astronomy and astrophotography is that you need a large telescope to get anything done.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  To prove this point I went out and took a photo of the great orion nebula in the winter constellation Orion with a common 300mm canon L lens, please click on the thumbnail below to view that.  The only special equipment I used to get this photograph was a telescope mount that's capable of moving through the sky at the 'sideareal' rate (one complete revolution every 23 hours 56 minutes).  With this mount (a Losmandy G11) properly aligned with the north celestial pole, all I did was bungee cord the camera and lens to the mount and took several 5 minute exposures to generate this photo, no telescope involved at all.  Why is this?  Fact is, most of the DSOs (deep sky objects) we find fascinating in the heavens are quite large, some as large if not larger than the full moon.  We have come to believe that it takes large telescopes to view these objects, this is not the case at all, what it takes is a patient eye and dark skies.  To photograph them it just takes something that will move through the sky at the same rate as the stars, typically a precision GEM (German Equitorial Mount). 

So this past December (06), I generated both of these images, one with a 300mm canon lens and the other with my Tak E-160 telescope.  What is it that we're looking at?  This is one of the prettiest areas of the sky with just oodles of active star birth going on.  On the left is what's known as "the running man nebula", a blue star cluster that illuminates the dark interstellar dust lanes giving this the shape of a "running man" (do you see him?).  On the right is the great orion nebula, one of the VERY FEW DSOs that is visible to the naked eye.  To find the orion nebula, locate Orion's belt, this is fairly easy, look for the three bright stars in a row seperated by about two fingers widths at arms length.  Right below Orion's belt is three dim stars making up his sword, the center of these three "stars" is actually what's pictured here, the Orion nebula.  If you have a pair of binoculars, spend some time getting your eyes dark adapted and enjoy the view, it's quite a treat.

One last note here, so one of these photos was taken with a 300mm lens, the other with a $2k telescope, have I proven my point about the non-necessity of getting into this hobby with a big telescope? 

Would like to know more about taking astrophotos?  Visit my how to take an astrophoto page on my website.