Very First Deep Sky Image, M43 of course ..... Every journey starts with a first step (Phil Hoppes)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: 41 the01 Ori · 43 the02 Ori · Great Orion Nebula · HD36939 · HD36982 · HD37042 · HD37061 · HD37062 · HD37114 · LBN 974 · M 42 · M 43 · Mairan's Nebula · NGC 1976 · NGC 1982 · Orion Nebula · Sh2-281 · The star θ1Ori · The star θ2Ori

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Very First Deep Sky Image, M43 of course ..... Every journey starts with a first step

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Very First Deep Sky Image, M43 of course ..... Every journey starts with a first step

Wanted to put this up for posterity sake basically. I know this is an abysmal photo, that's not the point. It is my very first DS Image. The list would be shorter to say what was working vs not but 1) Tracking not set up yet, so no tracking 2) Guide camera needs an extension tube to focus so no guide cam 3) Because of 1 & 2 focus was a crap shoot so I just did a WAG as best as I could with SharpCap on a 50 frame video trying to manually track...which was really not working 4) Polar alignment was SharpCap Fair-Good but not Excellent 5) Because of 1-4 setting up proper exposure was just a guess and probably too much 6) While I took Dark/Bias/Flat I've not processed them into the image yet. My guess is there's a half dozen more things wrong but their kind of in the grass compared to the big issues above. I've no worries I'll get it and hopefully more, like the title says...its a first step.

This was one of those.... I'd been dorking around for a few days with pointing, alignment, getting focus points etc. and tonight the sky was relatively clear for Phoenix at least and pointing was finally working pretty good. I've played a little with the new QHY5III462 cam but not much so on a whim I just slewed over to M43 and low and behold I got something. I'll come back a year from today assuming clear Skys and do an "After" shot and we can see how things have improved.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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Deep sky
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4161818
PixInsight job	32TOVI48LCS4PP3VQE5BENVIQGFIY3TX
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h35m17s.165
RA (top/left)	05h35m32s.397
RA (top/right)	05h34m23s.682
RA (bottom/right)	05h35m01s.801
RA (bottom/left)	05h36m10s.773

Dec (center)	-05°23′30″.60
Dec (top/left)	-05°10′14″.79
Dec (top/right)	-05°27′09″.20
Dec (bottom/right)	-05°36′42″.50
Dec (bottom/left)	-05°19′52″.15

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Very First Deep Sky Image, M43 of course ..... Every journey starts with a first step

Very First Deep Sky Image, M43 of course ..... Every journey starts with a first step

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Very First Deep Sky Image, M43 of course ..... Every journey starts with a first step

Very First Deep Sky Image, M43 of course ..... Every journey starts with a first step

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