Eta Carina first attempt

[glasseyes]

Hi All,

Thanks for a great website Mike, the pictures & info from members here is truly inspirational.

After looking at some of the great photos on this site I thought that it was time that I posted my own first successful attempt. I bought my first telescope in Feb this year and I have been practising mainly on Eta Carina. I still have heaps to learn and I welcome all comments.

This is my first upload attempt so fingers crossed that it works.

Thanks David (Westsky), Eric (EzyStyles), RogerG and BC2020 for your help and encouragement with my recent questions, etc.

[dugnsuz]

This belongs in the "Deep Sky" photography section I think.
Excellent pic - I'm particularly interested in the results you're getting as I'm about to get the same scope for the same purposes in the same part of the world!!!!
Very nice...
Cheers
Doug:thumbsup:

[glasseyes]

Thanks for your comments Doug. You should be pretty happy with the ED80, especially with the nice dark skies where you are.

[RB]

That's a beautiful image John.
You've captured nice detail and it's colours very well !

[Ric]

That's a lovely image John, very detailed.
You have made a fine start in the imaging dept.

l'm looking forward to seeing more.

Cheers

[glasseyes]

Thanks Ric and Andrew.
Very encouraging comments, much appreciated :)

[spearo]

Very well done, a "first pic" to be proud of!
keep 'em comin'
frank

[Ingo]

Very Nice.

Finally somebody shows off the capabilities of the Nikon D50. :thumbsup:

[glasseyes]

Thanks Frank and Ingo for your feedback. I am keen to find out how the D50 stacks up against the Canons, but I have much more to learn yet.
:)

[xelasnave]

John that is great work.
I have been trying out a D50 and it seems to get more noise on the one hand but better color on the other.
I have not taken any shots and done a dark fram subtract yet but on long exposures it would seem a must..at least with the one I am using...
I am going to give it a go next in the cooler box see if that helps.

There is a free program called Deep Sky Stacker that allows you to stack multiple shots to excellent effect and subtract a dark frame easily. or have you done that? and I missed it...
Good luck you are a natural.
alex

[Dr Nick]

Lovely! ;)

[glasseyes]

Thanks Alex and Dr Nick for your comments.

Alex,
I have tried quite a few processing tools and so far the jury is still out on which one suits me the best. The photo of EC was done using the in-camera long exposure NR which works very well if you don't mind waiting 3 mins for a 90-sec exposure to finish. There was therefore no dark subtraction needed for this shot and I used Registax to do the stacking.
The final tweaking was done in Photoshop, but I am still a beginner here. With a 90 sec exposure, there is not really enough lattitude to play with, but I am still struggling with alignment issues, so that was the best I could do on the night.
:newbie:
Jerry (74tuc) sent my image back to me re-processed with better colour, so I can see that I still have much to learn here. I have added Jerry's "quick-edit" below.

The D50 seems to be somewhat under rated, it has good noise figures, see the DP Review here http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond50/page26.asp
Also Jerry Lodriguss does a comparison between Canon and Nikon here http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/NIK_CAN.HTM
I value his opinion as he has 28 years of experience with both brands.
I will try my best to get better results with the Nikon and see what happens.
Thanks for your input. :)

[iceman]

Excellent first effort John! I'd be very happy with that.

Well done!

[glasseyes]

Alex,
Re the noise issue, stacking improves the s/n ratio quite a lot as you know.
I have added a couple of small clips of the corner of my EC image to illustrate the difference. the first is a single 90 sec frame and the second is 12 frames stacked in Registax. I hope these come out clear enough to show the improvement.
Please ignore the spherical abberation in these images, that's another issue I am trying to work through (don't you just love this hobby !!). :)

[hickny]

I've had my first telescope for a week. Not quite sure how to find Eta Carina. Saturn, Jupiter, Moon alpha Centarus is about all I can locate at present. Any suggestions??

[glasseyes]

Hi, I will send you a Private Mail (PM) message.