First reasonably clear night in a long long while so decided to image Carina for the first time this summer
Location : South Coast NSW Bortle 3 skies
Seeing : average
Wind : 5 km/hr
8” f5 Bintel GSO newt
Skywatcher EQ6-R Mount
Canon 600D stock with Baader coma corrector
Orion 60mm guide scope and ZWOASI120MM guide camera
54 x 3 minute dithered guided subs
25 x darks
ISO 800
PHD2 guiding ( best guiding so far on this mount 0.65 arc sec )
Dithering set to medium on each sub ( mount recovered extremely well from a dither )
Goto and tracking EQMOD, StellariumScope and Stellarium
Frame Focus and Capture - BYEOS
Stacked in DSS
Processed in Startools V1.5
Main image - Carina Nebula
Second image - Keyhole Nebula
Looks very nice Martin. It's a very different rendition to mine. I subdued the stars in favour of nebulosity whereas the stars/diamonds are a main feature of your image.
Excellent images to my eyes, the focus and guiding seem very good, love the pin point stars. They make the field look very busy but then again we are looking across the plane of the galaxy.
Thanks for the positive comments everyone
I agree the star field is condensed , the result of good clean data and image scale after stretching. In hindsight I should have used the Magic module in Startools to shrink or hide most of the faint stars in the background giving the interstellar background more depth with the brighter stars, always learning !!
Colour was a bit disappointing too but it’s difficult object to get to colour balanced as Carina so enormous with so much detail everywhere
The most exciting thing about that nights imaging was getting out after what seemed like an eternity due to the terrible bush fires , and their not over yet !
Also my EQ6-R Mount does an incredible job especially carrying nearly 15kg of payload , it just tracks and guides beautifully. Dithering is a joy too , Dec recovers quickly ( 5 seconds ) not like my HEQ5 which could take minutes , must be the belt drive on the EQ6-R
Thanks again for commenting
I lean the other way, for me the background stars add to the image rather than being neutral or detracting form the nebulosity. As Jeff mentioned, we are looking through the plane of the galaxy to image there.
Paul, when I mentioned remove background stars I should have been more specific and said remove the background stars that are extremely faint (ones that resemble noise if that makes sense) not all background stars. I agree and understand you are slicing through the galaxy at a certain plain and you want a 3D feel to the image.
Thanks Jim and Lostinspace
It was a beautiful night , perfectly still , reasonable seeing and the best guiding I’ve ever done on this mount
In hindsight I should have tuffed it out and captured more data , we always want more data. You get lazy and put off doing a meridian flip to gather more data on the other side , but it’s a poor excuse , good nights are few and far between
Got to bed at 3.20am
Carina is around for a while so I aim to capture it again
Thanks again
Thanks Chris
I use BYEOS for frame focus and capture ( the best no nonsense software for DSLR users )
I use EQMOD for Goto and tracking which can perform an automated flip but I prefer to do a manual flip , bit fiddley but doesn’t take to long to get framed up again
