What did I capture? - (edit) ETA Carina

[mswhin63]

Hi All, me again. I again was waiting last night to capture the moon although the seeing when it arose was awful and was completed wasted, also the wind gust even in my own little backyard made any sort of imaging terrible. Anyway while waiting for the moon to come up I manage to get the scope to stay still for at least 1 capture all the rest were just motion blur.
It is very noisy but don't mind this I was wondering what I captured.

10 seconds @ 1600ISO, if I captured more it would be less noisy and more detailed. Levels were adjusted to get more detail hence loads of noise as well.

BTW When this was taken I checked it and noticed it was out of focus so I re-adjusted it but the wind just wasn't letting me capture a stable shot after this.

[rcheshire]

Hi Malcolm, it's the nebula Eta Carina. Another very nice target.

[mswhin63]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I had a feeling it was, but being a bit blurred and orientation I had trouble identifying some features. Interesting capture though point and click as I could not identified nebulosity from my location with my finders scope just saw a bunch of stars and generally pointed in a direction.

I must admit I definately need a Coma corrector.

[tlgerdes]

In particular, you have the keyhole nebula in Eta Carinae.

What you need now to help with noise is.

1) go to 30sec or 1min as an exposure.
2) get 20x 30sec or 1min and use a program like Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) to average them together.
3) capture Dark frames of equivalent exposure ie 30 or 60 sec (ie put the lense cap over the telescope) to what your image pictures are (again capture 10 of them) and add these into your DSS average.

This will reduce the noise and allow you to "stretch" the data extract more picture.

[mswhin63]

Thanks Trevor good to know the data for capturing. I have to modify my mount to get longer exposures but I hope sometime next year will be able to do this. (Actually I am re-designing it)

I have used DSS before an only a single location with some worth captured - http://www.waelect.com.au/mswhin63/Malcolm%20Whinfield%20Astro%20Photo graphy/Deepsky/index.html#1
still restricted by the mount.

[tlgerdes]

Well try 10x 10 sec and see if you can reduce noise. Take darks as well.

[jjjnettie]

Well nabbed!
Try 100x10secs, then put the dust cap on and take 100x10sec darks.
Drop the iso down to ISO 800.
I'm getting excited for you . Extreme imaging is heap big fun. LOL