M42 and Eta Carina, from BrisVegas

[allan gould]

I used my integrating video camera (Watec 120N+) to take 10 sec shots of M42 and the Eta Carina Nebula just to see if it could peer through the light pollution of Brisbane and how good this camera is as an imager. Took 50x10 sec shots, dark corrected and stacked in Deepskystacker. Levels in PS.
I was surprised as there was less hassle taking the shots apart from clouds etc. Pleased to know I have a camera capable of 1/2000sec to 1min-10 min integrated shots, so I will see what its capable of doing with the planets.

[5ash]

Hi allan ,
Looks like your off to a good start.I've been using the g star ex and find that for nebula you need to take at least 200 frames to get a sharp noise free image. I know the watec is less noisy than the g star but i think you'll find that you'll get better pics.I have attached an m42 lrgb i took with the g star on my 8" lx90. It was 650 L , 200 R, 200 G and 200B stacked in DSS and adjusted in PS7.In each case the master dark was also the same number of frames as the light frames.

[Tamtarn]

Good effort Alan. Looks promising for planetary.

[allan gould]

Yes with these type of cameras its true that more is better. I use the Watec 120N+ purely as a guiding camera but was interested to see how it would image so I bought a USB capture device for $30 and connected to it with vertuldub (Excellent program). The only thing I dont like is all the *^%(*^ wires every where.
Anyway thanks for the kind comments. Ive found that the dynamic range of these cameras is very high as shown by fits liberator.

[EzyStyles]

top shot allan. for 10sec subs, that camera captured quite alot of photons!