Eta Carina and M42

[rumples riot]

Last night I got home early from my folks place and decided to do some imaging. The scope is currently setup in my little back yard and covered in tarps as I tend to take over an hour to get drift alignment done.

So I set up and took M42

2 x 2.30 mins
5x 3.00 mins

Stacked in registax 3
processed in Photoshop
filtered in Noiseware

Comments most welcome. I think that these shots are the sharpest and the tracking is near perfect. This will be my last M42 for this season as it is now hiding behind a big tree in my next door neighbours yard. Still all shots were unguided as my LPI does weird things when it is used as an autoguider, it goes off track within a minute and causes bad trailing. Any suggestions why this is happening?

[rumples riot]

Here is a much sharper carina

[iceman]

Wow Paul, your best images to-date... awesome stuff.

[gbeal]

Paul,
you definitely need some of our cloud, awesome shots.
Gary

[rumples riot]

Don't worry Gary, I have just had 5 days straight of cloud and yes I have seen the cloud cover over the land of the long white cloud. Sorry mate but I needed to do something. Unfortunately the seeing for Saturn was really terrible. So the 800 shots I captured are next best thing to useless. Anyway thanks guys for the compliments and yes I am very happy with the images, guiding is good and so too is focus.

[Striker]

I love it...best shot I have seen on this forum...gimmie your scope now.....lol.

[rumples riot]

Think you might need my brain also, it contains all the knowledge that makes these shots possible. The scope alone is not enough. Don't know if my other half would like me giving away my brain much. Then again she might want me brainless. LOL.

When you get to do some astrophotography I will be more than happy to help you with the learning curve.

[rumples riot]

Many thanks btw for the incredible compliment, but I think Gary's shots are better than mine. He has better equipment and much more experience than I do. Thankyou anyway.

[Striker]

Dam...you mean you needs some brain's and a wallet full of money aswell.....

Cant wait too see how shocking my first photo is going to look like...I have a back up plan....if its really bad I am going to scan a Fantastic photo out of a magazine or of the net and claim it do be mine.......lol....but dont tell anyone.....hehehe

[rumples riot]

Don't worry my first shots were with a 5700 I had and it was totally black, then slowly but surely I got better and better. Might need to go to a tri colour camera soon, as I am about the limit of the D70 now. But be assured your first shots will look aweful and part of the fun is getting the satisfaction from improving.

[Mick]

Bloody beautiful Paul, amazing images.

[gbeal]

Paul,
whoa, not sure if that is correct. I definitely think your M42 is a ripper. Nice tight stars for a start. This means the guiding is spot on, as is the focus. 7 exposures total is probably as few as I would dare, and maybe the only real thing you can do now is seek out a truly dark site. This will have the benefit of getting round the offending tree as well, although I do have a chainsaw which can help with that.
Keep at it, and start tackling other deep stuff. Above all don't be so modest, they are fantastic. Maybe a good time to revisit some of the old ones, the ones you took at the beginning, and were not overly happy with. Retry them, and see what huge progress has occured.
Gary

[rumples riot]

Got the dark site, having my new beach house built on it too. So roll on end of April. Going up in about five weeks to set the new pier in also, just need to find someone to make the pier. Dont have any plans do you for a pier?

I do want to start other photo projects now, I have just about done myself to death with these two. Wanted to go for crab nebula but that is blocked by my pegola. Anyone got any suggestions of galaxies or other targets along the milkyway from Orion down to Carina. I can see that area all night.

And yes I have looked at my old shots today and these are out of sight. It took six months but I finally have started to get some great results. Still I think your work is better.

Paul

[seeker372011]

Hey paul these images are sensational..they just keep getting better
how about the horsehead and or the running man (NGC 1977)?

Or the pleides ? as your next projects?

[rumples riot]

Can't get Pleides at the moment, but Running man is in the right place and so too is the horsehead. See what I can do in the next week or so.

[[1ponders]]

Congrats Paul. Brilliant:prey2: :prey2: :prey2: You are the guru of the moment :P :D

[gbeal]

Paul,
is the Carina cluster the same as the one in my "Christmas Comet" posting (NGC2516 or similar)?
A pier is simple.
Get a piece of steel tube, mine is about 150mm with a wall thickness of about 5mm.
It is only 600mm tall, but with the SCT you will need more, obviously.
In my case I welded a flat plate to the bottom, and drilled four holes at the corners.
I dug a significant hole, and poured a "plug" of concrete, throwing some old steel pipe etc in as reinforcing. As the concrete was setting I placed four bolts in the stuff, with the threads exposed. Once set I place the plate and hols over the bolts, and tighten it down with nuts/washers. Simple.
OK the top in mine is open, and similar in size to the G-11 base, but you could simply weld another flat plate onto the top for the LX base, or wedge, whatever.
Need some pictures?
Gary

[rumples riot]

Yeah pics would be nice thanks Gary

[gbeal]

OK,
later, I have to fly right now, if you know what I mean.

[rumples riot]

Gary when I was referring to Carina I meant the constellation, I know the cluster you are talking about and it is exactly 180 degrees from the direction I was talking about. Between the shed, pergola and tree I cannot get any thing past Orion in RA at the moment. Am working on that with the design of the pier, will be much taller and I will have a deck to stand on. This should put me up above the gutter line and thereby increase my FOV.

[gbeal]

Paul,
didn't get the snaps of the pier today, one of those days.
It will be good to have you out of the gutter so to speak as well.
Not sure of the cluster you mean, but it will be getting higher as the months go, so will be in view for you soon no doubt.
Gary

[beren]

:) Congrats on the fine images Paul :cool:

[Saturn%5]

Just Fantastic.


:eyepop:

[gbeal]

Paul,
base of the pier looks like this.
Gary

[rumples riot]

Just did some changing of the curves and colour adjustment to the Eta Carina shot. More of the red showing and the dust lanes are more visible. What do you all think, is it better or should I stay with the original.

[iceman]

So much nebula it almost looks like skyglow..

I think I prefer the original. Is it possible to get a wider shot?

[[1ponders]]

I think they both look great Paul. Each has something the other isn't showing. Not that that's in any way a detraction.

IMHO splitting the difference between the two might keep the deep colour of the original, keep the additional red you've brought out but remove some of the"washed out" or lack of colour intensity from the from the centre of the image.

I'd be interested in the process you went through to achieve these images. Especially if you posted your unprocessed original, as a comparison

[rumples riot]

Yes I tend to think that I need to go somewhere in between. See what I can do. Beefing up the curves does tend to show the vignetting a little more also. Thanks anyway chaps.

[rumples riot]

Here is the start shot after staking a group of 4.

[rumples riot]

I then process in photoshop the levels, curves (open the curve in the centre), adjust the colour balance ( you need to adjust all areas with a concentration on Red, Magenta and blue due to the natural colours of the nebula). Next I address the brightness and contrast. Brightness I reduce a little (2 or 3 points) and increase contrast by 5 or six. Then I increase the saturation to 25 and this gives the result below.

This shot is the in between shot from the original post and the more extreme shot. I am not sure about the result, and tend to think that the original was the best. Anyway I would appreciate everyones opinion as I can sometimes get bogged down in the final process and start second guessing myself.

Comments?

[rumples riot]

The original for comparison

[[1ponders]]

I like it. The 4 stack that is.

It really looks more natural, more "life like" if you will. I'd like to see shots in this colour grade in more astonomy mags and books so that people just starting out would get a more realistic expectation at to what they might see. Rather than the high colour images (which definately still have their paramount place as visual mind blowers :) )

I think you've really captured the visual aspect of the gas and dust cloud exceptionally well. Which is not taking anything away from the other two great works.

Keep up the inspiring work Paul.

ps how about a review of what you do to capture and process the images over in the Tips and Techniques forum

[rumples riot]

Sure will do something like that soon with a complete run down as to how I go about business on the night.

[[1ponders]]

:doh: You and I must have been posting at the same time Paul. :D Thanks for the info on your processing:P

[cometcatcher]

It is always the eternal question, how much processing to do...

I can spend hours on it. Much of it cleaning up defects. That mintron video camera of mine has more defects than me. :bashcomp:

[[1ponders]]

:lol2: :lol2:

[rumples riot]

With all the good shots getting around I thought I would do some masking and have come up with this. I like it and I think it shows more detail.

The larger version does not show the grain that this does and is nice a crisp.

[[1ponders]]

Your going ahead in leaps and bounds Paul. Thats brilliant!

[silvinator]

fellas, gbeal and rumples, you're both brilliant! Now that settles it :D
I was thinking about what ponders said about trying to get an inbetween shot of your carina nebula shots. So I tried combining your second shot (the one with the curves and colour adjustments, which I also thinks looks a bit like skyglow) with your 5th shot (the one you posted as being the original, before the levels and curves) in photoshop. I came up with this:
There's slightly more nebulosity but the colour seems a bit washed out. But you're right, we could just go on processing and reprocessing everything but in the end, it's up to the eye of the beholder - if it looks good to you, then keep it. Personally, I like your 5th shot, the original. The balance between the colour and the nebulosity is good. My fiance agrees too, he said he like your image over the processed one I tried, which is fair enough since I agree too! Well, they are all great images so keep it up!

[rumples riot]

Hey thanks Silvie for the input. Always good to get another opinion on how things look. I can get really caught up in what looks good and what does not.

Incidently, your processing is quite good and I think that I will keep your shot. Thankyou for your imput and thank your fiance too.

Regards

Paul

[silvinator]

Not a prob rumples. I always like to help out when I can. I'm glad you liked the processing. If you want, I can tell you exactly what I did then you can apply those steps to your original versions of the pics you posted as I think then it would look much better as I was working with your scaled down versions. Just let me know.

[[1ponders]]

Top work everyone. Really inspiring:cool2: