A Quick Carina in between the Clouds

[Startrek (Martin)]

After nearly 3 months of cloudy nights on the mid and south east coast of NSW , the 23rd January provided about 6 hours of clear skies to image but you guessed it, a near full moon was lighting up the sky.
As the ongoing forecast to at least late February early March was more cloudy nights , I decided to pick a big bright target like NGC 3372 and complete an imaging run in that small window of opportunity.
Clouds cleared around 10.30pm , locked on to the target and was imaging by 11.00pm
Finished my session at 4.30am after taking Flats ( total integration 3 hours )

Location : South Coast NSW
Skies : Bortle 3
Conditions : Average to Good Seeing
Full Moon
Very light wind ( 5 to 8 km/hr )
Thankfully no Dew

NexDome Obs
Telescope : 10" f5 Klaus Helmerich Carbon Fibre Newt
Mount : Skywatcher EQ8-R Pro
Imaging Camera : ZWO 2600MM temp -10C , Gain 100
Coma Corrector : TS Optics GPU
Filter Wheel : ZWO EFW 7 x 2"
Filters : Antlia 3nm Ha , Oiii and Sii
Guide Scope : Orion 60mm with helical focuser
Guide Camera : ZWO 290MM
ZWO EAF
22 x 3min subs Ha
20 x 3 min subs Oiii
22 x 3 min subs Sii
Darks from Library
Bias from Library
Flats Ha, Oiii , Sii
Tracking and Goto : Eqmod and Stellarium
Aquisition : APT
Guiding : PHD2 ( 0.45 to 0.55 arc sec total rms avg )
Analysed , Calibrated and Stacked in ASTAP
Processed in Startools V1.8 ( Data Sets loaded into Compose , Color SHO: HST preset with tweaks )
Also used Startools Spatially Variant PSF Deconvolution ( 12 samples , 8 iterations ) to improve the res
Quite happy with level of fine detail for only 3 hours of data and my focal length of 1280mm

Link to Astrobin below for full resolution…..
https://www.astrobin.com/lkrhma/

Thanks for Looking
Comments Welcome

Martin

[Dave882 (David)]

Well that’s just marvellous Martin congrats for making the most of some elusive clear sky. Amazing detail and colour galore. Excellent processing! I havent had the rig out for months. Almost forgetting what it’s like to be under the stars

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Some really nice detail Martin great work!

[Benjamin (Ben)]

Great capture. Especially like the Homunculuas structure coming through :-)

[gregbradley]

Nice work Martin.

Greg.

[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

Excellent idea sneaking in and grabbing some photons whilst the opportunity was there. Good choice of objects as well for this activity and a great result as well

[CoolhandJo (Paul)]

nice detail

[Startrek (Martin)]

Thanks for all your comments
Appreciate it
It was a lucky window of opportunity
A great night where everything just worked and the data was pretty clean too
I think I only discarded 3 subs due to a random cloud patch passing overhead
Cheers
Martin

[Craig_]

Great detail in this! Carina is a banger of a target for those full moon nights.

[Startrek (Martin)]

Originally Posted by Craig_

Great detail in this! Carina is a banger of a target for those full moon nights.

Thanks Craig,
Yep Carina never disappoints whether it’s a wide field or semi deep like mine
Us southern hemisphere folk don’t realise what we have up there to observe and image , Carina is the mother of all nebula, a real jewel in our skies
Cheers
Martin