Astronomy Photo question

[Easternlight]

So there is an article in my local paper today.

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/breathtaking-night-sk...

The chap in the piece is supposed to have taken this picture of the Great Orion Nebula with a canon camera model unknown and a 600mm lens also unkown.
I've done a bit of photgraphy and find this hard to believe?
Can it be done?

[eharding]

The image scale looks about right for a crop sensor - this is the FOV calculation from Stellarium for a Canon 50D and the 600mm F4 lens ....



...but I don't think the photo you've posted above is of Orion, but of the Rosette Nebula instead - same sort of scale though....



Given a decent tracking mount (a 600mm lens is going to be fairly heavy) perfectly possible to capture that sort of image - but for the cost of a new Canon 600mm prime you could get a top-flight mount and telescope which would give you better results for half the money.

Lots of deep-sky astrophotography is done using DSLR bodies on telescopes - by the look of that image the camera may have been astro-modified by having some of the filtering removed from the sensor.

[Easternlight]

Thanks for the detailed reply.
I'm surprised that you can do that. I expected you would need far more magnification for such a photo.
The piece does rather sugest it was taken in a very amature easily done way, but I suspected this was not the case.
Local paper journalism at its best?

[eharding]

It wouldn't be a spur of the moment shot - as the article says, he used a tracking mount and probably combined a series of exposures of a few minutes in a process called 'stacking', and then stretched the levels to bring out the detail.

I'd have a go at the Rosette tonight, but as the year has progressed the Rosette and Orion nebulae have sunk into the west - this time of year is known as 'Galaxy Season' when galaxies are a more promising target.

[SCEtoAUX]

Easternlight said:

So there is an article in my local paper today.

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/breathtaking-night-sk...

The chap in the piece is supposed to have taken this picture of the Great Orion Nebula with a canon camera model unknown and a 600mm lens also unkown.
I've done a bit of photgraphy and find this hard to believe?
Can it be done?

The simple answer is "yes". The key thing, as stated above, is a motorised mount to track the sky and taking lots of images. Much more about the techniques than the equipment.