The Carina Nebula

[Andrew_Campbell (Andrew)]

Total AP newbie. 20 Minutes of Lights, ISO 200, Unmod Canon 7D with an Orion ED80T-CF on an NEQ6-Pro. Still working out how to minimise image sizes, so it's a little messier at this size than it really is. Pretty horrible seeing and I definitely need to work on my tracking accuracy, but I'm happy with this for a First light image.

[Atmos (Colin)]

Looks good Andrew. Nebulosity is showing nicely and it doesn't have a heavily processed look

[Anth10 (Anthony M)]

Andrew,
Off to a flying start, nice shot that! Clean image, low noise at the modest ISO, well done.

[PKay (Peter)]

Way to go Andrew and a great achievement!

Well done.

Now we look forward to many more sleepless nights :-)

[Regulus (Trevor)]

This is a nice presentation of the nebula Andrew. Like the subdued colours a lot.
Well done.

Trev

As for resizing: if you have software that gives you options, then BiCubic for shrinking.
This is a good site for info on photography basics from Cambridge Uni, and this page relates to resizing images downwards.
If you go to the main menu, there is one on upsizing too.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...erpolation.htm

[skysurfer]

Nice picture !

What means 20 minutes of lights ? 10x2 minutes or 2x10 min or a single of 20 minutes ?
10x2 minutes != 2x10 minutes.
The exposure time per frame is the most important, but the noise in the final photo is the inverse of the square root of the number of frames, so 16 frames makes only a quarter of the noise.

So in my opinion / experience the 'real' combined exposure time is
(exposure per frame) * sqrt(number of frames).

In all cases, you can get much more from the original frames you already have. After stacking, you can add +1 or +2EV to the exposure in postprocessing and then process further. But this is a good beginning !
That is called the ETTR (Expose To The Right) approach which means that the histogram should not be too far left and from the other hand there should be no clipping (which presents as 'burned in' brighter stars).

So don't be too shy on somewhat more exposure.

Check this page: http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/index.html#part_3

[xelasnave]

Years ago for folk in the forums that I belonged to it was a case of if you could find it you took a snap.
You did well.
Alex

[LostInSp_ce]

Looks great Andrew. I like they way you've processed this. Nice contrast and colour balance make this image feel very natural.

[RickS (Rick)]

That's a very decent Carina Nebula, Andrew. Well done

[Fernando]

Hi Andrew, looks great to my eyes. Regards, Fernando

[Andrew_Campbell (Andrew)]

Appreciate the feedback, folks. The image was constructed from 4x 5min lights and a 'number' of Darks, flats and Bias
I did make a conscious effort in my muppet-like bumbling, post stacking, to keep the colours as natural and unenhanced as I could, whilst still keeping it clear what the object was. First step on a journey, and I'm happy with that
I've just bought (had-bought-for-me-by-my-wife-for-Christmas) a QHY 5L II and an Orion thin OAG, so that should, after some tweaking, make my guiding job a lot more streamlined.
Cheers.