Carina Nebula Wide

[Mickoid]

While Carina seems to be in vogue at the moment, here's a widefield view to add to the collection. I took this last night from my Bortle 6 suburban backyard with a 40 year old SUN 200mm lens. I made an external aperture of around f 5.6 to fit on the front of the lens (the internal aperture is stuck wide open). Tried to get as much colour as I could from the light polluted skies and so combined two sets of data, some Triband filtered and UVIR cut filter shots to help achieve this. The stars have some fringing if you look closely but the overall picture came out OK. Taken with a modded Canon 550d, unguided on an old HEQ5 non-GOTO mount.

[leon]

Well Michael that turned out to be a fine effort indeed with such simple older equipment, just goes to show that "Good Glass Never Dies", well done.

Leon

[Ryderscope]

That’s a great result Michael, you should be happy with that. Shows what some clever innovation can achieve.

[Mickoid]

Thanks Leon, so true, as long as you can keep it clean! The compressed JPG has lost a lot of the detail of the original TIF file. The stars especially look very rough in the picture posted here.


Thanks Rodney, I must add, the idea of the external aperture came from the IIS member "bojan" a while back, so I can't take the credit for that. The fact that the lens internal aperture was stuck wide open prompted me to use this method. As well as solving the problem, it also removes the distracting star spikes caused by aperture blades.

[matlud]

Nice image Michael, it turned out very well 👍👍

[Toddylamo]

Those are impressive stars with an older lens - especially a third party one. What sun lens is it exactly? I have a Sun 70-210mm macro zoom for OM mount and would be keen to try it out. Might even try out the OM 300mm f/4.5 I have.
I do notice that with a lot of older lenses at all focal lengths that they are as sharp as newer ones when stopped down, but have a lot more purple fringing. I guess that was difficult to control cheaply back in the day.

[Mickoid]

Thanks Mathew, a quick and easy set up on the night with cheap equipment sometimes works well.

Thanks Harry, it was a 200mm f2.8 prime lens. Comes good for astro at around f5.6, even better at f8 - f11. That usually reduces the colour fringing. The coatings on newer lenses are much better these days.

[Maberly1959]

amazing colour

[Spaceman_Brown]

Carina Nebula is so awesome. Southern hemisphere represent! 🤙