Eta Carina First complete image Esprit 150

[Ant0nio]

Hi all,

Finally managed a complete image with my Esprit 150 after several months of ownership. 60 x 120sec exposures shot with ZWO ASI094MC Pro. Acquired with Nebulosity IV, pre processed using Siril & post processed with PScc 2021.
2 hrs Data in all after months of frustrating clouds. The weather has been cruel & my thoughts are with those who have suffered from the recent floods. In spite of this some excellent images have been posted on this forum lately & I congratulate all who have contributed.
After many attempts at processing this I'm happy enough with the final result & thankful to be able to add something to the mix.
Thanks for looking & comments welcome.

Full size here https://www.astrobin.com/0bm642/

Best,
Tony

[alpal]

Hi Tony,
that is an excellent shot.
The stars are small and tight - so the optics are perfect.
The colour looks a little overdone in the reds/purples.


cheers
Allan

[Ant0nio]

Thanks Allan,

In an effort to maintain scientifically correct colours I usually refer to a select few reference images for guidance. In this case the native colour correction of the scope after stretching the data resulted in a fairly close match to this image by Rob Gendler/ Roberto Colombari,
http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/Eta-HST-ESO-M.html
My first thoughts were inline with your comments but I decided to run with it anyway & embrace the "dark & dripping with colour look" :).
Thanks for the feedback Allan.

Cheers,
Tony

[alpal]

Hi Tony,
it's artistic license.
Gendler tends to go for over saturated chocolate box colours.
I prefer a milder look as per this APOD:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181227.html


cheers
Allan

[gregbradley]

I like it and Gendler is one of my all time favourite astrophotographers.

Your scope is also performing excellently.

A very sharp image and the star colours are terrific.

Greg.

[Emuhead]

Really like the star colours & how they've been carefully managed. You can make out the homunculus of eta carinae too which is great too.

[PRejto]

Nice first attempt and I agree that the stars are very tight and with nice colour.

However, I personally think this could easily be stretched more without blowing out anything; the nebula looks quite muted to me. Just try a simple auto adjustment in Photoshop levels to get an idea of what is possible. The histogram shows a huge amount of "room" that is wasted! To do it properly you would probably need to protect the brighter stars with a mask.

The other thing I've noticed is that The RGB histogram peaks are shifted relative to each other. Again, in my view they ought to have been "aligned" early in the processing. When I do this roughly the red doesn't predominate as much and there is more blue evident.

Peter

Edit. I've played around with your image and I think the result is pretty interesting. I won't post it (unless you want me to) but I'm happy to email to you if you want to contact me off line.

[AdamJL]

Really lovely effort there, Tony. Agree it could be stretched further a tad, but boy that starfield is amazing. Beautiful colours throughout!

[Ant0nio]

Thanks Greg,

I'm glad you like it, I'm still getting used to the scope.
As far as Rob Gendler goes, the man certainly has my respect with over 100 APOD's to his credit as well as his enormous contribution to astrophotography.
Cheers :thumbsup:



Thank you Andrew :thumbsup:



Thanks Peter,
I must admit the Histogram annoyed me as well. I very much a novice with my post processing, a great deal of trial & error involved. I'd like to see what you came up with though, I'll PM you with my email.
Cheers.



Thanks Adam,
I' glad you like it & I appreciate the input.
Cheers.

[Nikolas]

superb image, especially those stars, I do think the colours need to be a little muted but wow!

[AdamJL]

Have to say, the more I look at this, the more I love it. Gosh, that full sized view on Astrobin is incredible.

[Ant0nio]

Thanks Nik, I appreciate your feedback.

Cheers,
Tony



Made my day Adam :). Thanks very much.

Cheers.

[multiweb]

That's a great field. Beautiful star colors and details. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Ant0nio]

Thank you very much Marc, I'm glad you like it. :)