Eta Carina 6-4-07

[mick pinner]

Eta Carina 1 x 10 min exposure
imaged through ED 100 @ f/9 with Canon 350D unmodified @ iso 800
hand guided with LX 200 @ f/10
level processing in PS2

[Tamtarn]

A single 10 minute shot WOW !!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[MortonH]

Beautiful.

Morton

[FOOTPRINT]

Hi Mick,
Great colour there, nice to see what the ED100 does, I notice that your focus might be a tad out (easy to do) and in processing the intensity or contrast is too great, you have white-out in the keyhole portion of the nebula where there is normally a lot of detail, I would suggest you could improve the detail a lot if you cut back on the brightness, also do a sharpen function with whatever software you process with, this should improve a good picture even more (constructive criticisim only) look forward to seeing more from the ED100.
P.S. Do you mount the ED100 on the LX200, I have a Tak100 here on loan and tried this, but its a bit heavy and the LX200 (on a Giant wedge) dosent want to guide correctly in Dec...Pix. attd. showing results. J.W.
cheers....Jim

[FOOTPRINT]

Hi Mick,
Pix. hererwith showing guiding probs. of the Tak-100 on the LX200.

cheers.Jim

[mick pinner]

hi Jim, you are correct about the focus l agree, the photo was taken about 9.00 last night so things were a bit rushed with the moon rising just to the east. criticism is greatly accepted.
l am only starting to browse through PS2 for processing and will slowly come to grips with what it can do over the winter months but l like to keep images as close to natural (whatever that is) as l can, some seem way over processed to me, almost bordering on plastic.
the ED is mounted on the LX200 with an Ultra Wedge and seems to guide very well indeed, it is balanced exactly and drift alignment up to 30 min is very accurate.

[FOOTPRINT]

Hi Mick,
Thanks for the Pix. of your setup, I can see the differences, 1- A 12" Scope (mine is 10") 2- the angle of the fork arms at your latitude. The larger Scope offers a longer plarform, The Dec. angle is much better (forks) when looking at Carina, here its sitting much closer to horizontal, and the weight is much greater on the drive pivot/gears Etc., this is where a GE mount would shine.

cheers.............Jim