Learner Eta Carina

[telecasterguru]

I hope that I have attached my learner shot of Eta Carina. (at least I think that is what it is) I'm new to this. Taken with an unmodified 350d on a 200mm Newt and EQ6. 4x30 seconds aligned images with Gimp but no other processing. Taken last night from my back porch inner Sydney. I am still learning drift alignment.

[Quark]

Hi Frank,

That is indeed Eta Carina and the Key Hole Nebula. It was quite bright last night with the Moon, I had a group of students from The Methodist Ladies College from Burwood at my observatory in Broken Hill last night and this is one of the object we observed.

Considering where you took this image from and the brightness of the Moon, I think this is a top effort. Your polar alignment looks ok and you have captured a reasonable amount of the structure of the emission neb. This is a top effort from inner Sydney.

Regards
Trevor

[bluescope]

Now you only need about another 30 frames or so to try and bring out some more detail Frank. Wouldn't be easy to image from inner Sydney mate !
What ISO were you using ?

:thumbsup:

[telecasterguru]

I was working with ISO 400, I tried 800 but it was washing out. I didn't do any darks either. I have a street light about 8 metres from my porch.
I'm going up to the northern beaches this afternoon and want to try out my ed80 guide and Orion Starshooter. Never tried to guide before so it will be trial and error. I wanted to get the basics of drift alignment first. When I plug the starshooter into the EQ6 what mount do I tell the computer? Also when I tried to practice focus with the ed80 with a 1.25 lens it would reach focus! Do I need to add an extension tube? Thanks for the feed back as I am looking for all the help I can get.
Frank

[tornado33]

Doing some darks and flats is the go. Flats will eliminate the vignetting round the edges. I used Gradient Xterminator photoshop plugin here to remove some of the vigneting and neutralize colour balance, allowing the contract to be increased. That brings out more detail.

If you do 10 or more frames, and use darks and flats, you will be amazed at what detail you can get :)
Scott

[desler]

I needed an extension tube for prime focus. I'm probably a lot newer to this than you, but I'm told it's normal as you would normally have a Diagonal there anyway.

I was told 50 mm, but then I bought and adjustable one that worked, first time I connected everything last night.

Great image!

Darren:)

[telecasterguru]

Desler, I used a 50mm extension last night on the ed80 and it worked perfectly.
Tornado 33, I can't believe what an enormous difference that little touchup made to the image (it may have been a big touchup). AMAZING. Is this part of the Photoshop suite? If I buy Photoshop what do I ask for as there appears to be about 4 or 5 versions?

[alan meehan]

Hi Frank nice image nice field of view more darks and flats longer exposures with some guiding and you hooked ,well done