NGC 3372 Carina Outer Regions

[Startrek]

Captured NGC 3372 Carina Nebula for the second time this year , however instead of centre framing the object , I decided to focus on one of the outer arms of this gigantic nebula for a different aspect as the FOV on my rig only captures about 50% of the whole nebula.

Captured over 2 nights ( just over 6 hours integration)
Waning Moon 50% to 25%
Seeing conditions average
Bortle 8 City suburban skies
8”f5 Klaus Helmerich Carbon fibre Newtonian Reflector
Skywatcher EQ6-R pro mount
ZWO 2600MM cooled to -10C , Gain 100
ZWO 7x2” EFW
ZWO EAF
Antlia 3nm Filters
Ha 67x 2 min dithered subs
Oiii 62 x 2 min dithered subs
Sii 65 x 2 min dithered subs
Bias frames from library
Darks frames from Library
Flats Ha , Oiii and Sii
Analysed , Calibrated, Stacked and Aligned in ASTAP
Processed in Startools V1.8 via Compose
Used SV Deconvolution in Synthetic Mode

Created quite a few SHO versions using the Startools Matrix feature in the Colour module and then a slight tweak using DPP4.

Quite pleased with the results
The image was very clean with minimal noise to mitigate
The only anomaly was my Sii frames were not framed and aligned properly during capture plus I had some slight rotation as I don’t plate solve. Hence the only large star in the image has some splayed diffraction spikes as ASTAP couldn’t quite align the rotation perfectly.
Not a big deal

Had a lot of fun with this project
I’ll leave Carina now until next year to move onto other targets

Astrobin link below for full resolution…..

https://www.astrobin.com/qia6ts/

Created 5 x SHO versions , 1 x HOO version and original Synthetic Luminance version


Comments welcome
Thanks for looking

Clear Skies
Martin

[Dave882]

That’s really nice Martin. There’s just so much in our beautiful Carina there’s always something new to find. I love the small ‘tower’ laying horizontal in the upper third, and some other very interesting detail a little below that as well. It’s a couple of years I think since I’ve imaged carina, I’m staring to get the itch tho!

Just a random question- your full size image on Astrobin is only 1.5mb. I would have thought you’d still be loosing some resolution at that size?

[CoolhandJo]

Very nice. Arhh yes the colour choices are endless! Nice detail too.

[Startrek]

Thanks Dave,
Yeh Carina is full of unexplored wonders , your big rig would uncover some interesting details.
After 71% binning and cropping the edges my images usually end up around 4200 x 2700 pixels ready for processing ( sensor is 6248 x 4176 or 26Megapixel ) My image scale is 0.77 arc sec per pixel on the 8” and the 10” down south is 0.62 arc sec per pixel so I’ve got some oversampling to play with in respect to software binning in Startools which trades “wasted” resolution for noise reduction ie improved SNR . Startools has scalable binning not the old 2x2 or 4x4 etc… you can Bin at any percentage you wish based on your sampling.
Image sizes for range from 1MB to 1.8MB , I don’t think I’ve ever had a 2MB final image. My PC would be too slow with images sizes bigger than 2MB and of course a lot noisier too.
The amount of noise to mitigate varies from image to image but does reduce your image size in ST.
To improve res , I just have to collect more good data which never fails.

Cheers
Martin

[Startrek]

Thank Paul,
Startools colour module has about 20 different SHO presets so when you add tweaks this could result in 50 or more different renditions
It also has presets for OSC Duoband , HOO , OHS and loads of other combos not to mention your Broadband LRGB options

Cheers
Martin