Eta Carina

[Swarvy]

G'day

Back date to Christmas 2021 my wife bought me a telescope for visual observation. I quickly became hooked looking over the moon and all its craters, seeing the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. I decided to look online to see what else was out there I was able to observe when I came across this forum. I looked in the deep space section and my mind was blown. People are able to take photos of nebula/galaxies/star clusters etc from their own back yard??? This was something I wanted to be able to do. So for the past several months iv slowly being buying parts to make a kit.

WO z73 with flattener
50mm Guide scope and asi120mm
Heq5
Antlia Filters
ASIAIR plus
ASI533mm

The last piece of the puzzle was the camera which came this Christmas. After a night of just working out how the asiair worked and practicing polar alignment which I found relatively easy with the asiair experimental “all sky polar alignment” I took my first subs of M42. Around 5 hours. They didn’t work out. Haha! Abit disheartened but determined to try again I decided to change my target to Eta Carina. After many attempts of trying to post process, watching more tutorials, post processing again . This is the end result.

30x300s Ha
30x300s OIII
20x300s SII

I realised after I had finished editing that there is a thing called back focus. I had used most of the adapters that came with the camera which is probably why the m42 subs I took didn’t turn out well. No idea why Carina worked a lot better when nothing had been changed, but I’m happy with it anyway.

Thank you all for inspiring me to get into this hobby and thanks for looking.

CC welcome.

Cheers,
Adam

[AstroViking]

Hi Adam,

I think you're a very brave man to jump straight into the "deep end" of mono imaging without the usual DSLR -> OSC -> Mono progression.

For a first image, it's a ripper. Good detail, round stars, and good contrast between the brighter core and the darker clouds.

I'm not a mono imager, but I suspect adding some Luminance in there would help bring the stars out a bit more. Either by shooting Luminance directly, or by substituting the Ha layer for it. No doubt more knowledgeable people will chime in here...

A great start, and I can't wait to see more of your work.

Cheers,
V

[xelasnave]

Hey Adam for the time you have been in the hobby that is exceptional...when I started it was a couple of hours for polar align, half an hour for focusing, some time to find your object...etc..Thanks Asiair plus.
Keep up the great effort..you are a natural.
Alex

[Swarvy]

Thanks Steve! knowing myself too well, if i had bought a DSLR within a month i would of wanted to 'upgrade'. So im basically trying to save myself some costs in the long run .

Iv tried making a luminence layer with Ha but every time i combined it to the image the colours would become all scuffed. Obv doing something wrong and i need to look into it more.

Cheers, Adam

[Swarvy]

Thanks for the kind words Alex. The ASIAIR plus really is great!

[oska]

Really nice work Adam, especially for a first, it's fantastic. It's probably the jpg but to me it might be your focus is slightly off, do you autofocus? You will have to verify your back focus/tilt arrangement by doing test shots. On one setup I had an extra 2.1mm to get back focus properly. What are you using for processing?

[Stephane]

Wow, that is an incredible first image. I wish my first one had been anywhere near that nice. Well done!!

[Swarvy]

Gday John,

I used the bahtinov mask that comes with the telescope for focus. I had used most of the adaptors that came with the camera as i didnt realise there was also backfocus. After reading up on it i realised mine was about 11mm out but decided on post processing the image anyway. Iv since corrected it(i hope).

I used pixinsight to process with a few final touches in photoshop.

Cheers,
Adam

[Swarvy]

Thankyou Stephane!

[geoffl]

Nice Photo i have the ASI 533MC so hope the pics will come out somewhere as nice as yours.