Another 400mm f5.6L First Light - Eta

[Mighty_oz]

Thanks to dugnsuz's inspiring work i've also joined the Canon 400L and more club.
Here is my rendition of Eta, there was no way i was going to try M42 after Doug's fantastic shot, it would be such a poor comparison.

Details...
Canon 500D DSLR unmodded
Canon 400mm f5.6L Lens at f5.6, iso 400
Total exposure time: 22x3 (66) mins with 5x3 min darks
No light pollution filter used, need one as was taken in suburbiania
Raws loaded into CS4 saved as tiffs then aligned and stacked in ImagesPlus DDp applied then some curves and levels in CS4.

These lenses are just wonderful to use! Keep taking photo's Doug i love to look at them.

Marcus.

[dugnsuz]

That's a lovely flat field Marcus - love those L lenses (poor man's Taks!!;))

You've captured a nice amount of detail but I'm sure you could push it some more.

If your situation allows, try increasing sub times to 5mins and up the iso to 800 (1600 if you're brave), also take some Flats.
You'll also need some shorter subs to act as Masks for the blow out of the central region of the nebula which will occur with increased exposure time.
Check out Louis' tutorials if you're unfamiliar with layer masks...
http://atalas.businesscatalyst.com/Masks_for_Photoshop.html

Cheap Plug Time...
"No light pollution filter used, need one as was taken in suburbiania"
Here's one for you...
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?p=683676#post683676

Great work mate - you'll soon be trying to push this lens to the limits.

Go for M42 - it'll be great.

Cheers
Doug:thumbsup:

[Mighty_oz]

Thanks for the comments Doug, not sure about pushing much further tho as histogram is approaching the middle as it is. But one can only try hey :) Will do as u suggest.

[Dennis]

Hi Marcus

That’s a great image of Eta Carina. I saved a copy and pushed the data (maybe too much?) and have uploaded the results for a comparison. There is definitely more structure and colour in your data, although I guess it comes down to personal taste as to how far to push it.

How was the 400mm mounted and did you auto guide or were you simply tracking at the sidereal rate?

Cheers

Dennis

PS – please excuse the compression artefacts in my re-process; I had to be quite severe to keep the image size below 200k

[Mighty_oz]

Just mounted on the telescope guided with phd.