Homunculus with a 550D video

[von Tom]

Here is an image of the Homunculus nebula around Eta Carinae.

This was shot with a Canon EOS 550D in video crop mode (640x480@60fps) at ISO6400 1/60th sec exposures through a 12" Sky-Watcher Goto Dobsonian for about 1500 frames stacked in Registax.

There is obviously alot of noise but I was very surprised to find that there is some detail in the nebula comparable to the AAT images I used to see in the '80s: http://www.aao.gov.au/images/captions/aat045.html


I've attached a jpg of an original single frame and replaced the original image with one less noisy.

Cheers,

Tom

[renormalised]

Good try :):)

Pity about the noise, but then again it is a DSLR. You want to get yourself a modded webcam or an astrovideo camera like a GStar EX.

[[1ponders]]

Talk about pushing the imaging envelope!! What an effort.

[John Hothersall]

Excellent Tom, at long FL this cloud around Eta shows easily but getting a good video is the problem and the Gstar-Ex is excellent owing to its sensitivity and low noise. You can see the cloud shape easily.

John.

[gregbradley]

A great result. That is one small object you picked up there.

Greg.

[von Tom]

Thanks for the comments. I've adjusted levels to remove the noise - it didn't remove as much of the object detail as I thought and probably does more justice to the DSLR :). I'm not yet ready for a dedicated CCD and at the moment I enjoy squeezing the most I can out of the 550D and Dob and its ease of setting up and imaging. And from the same camera I can do wide field as well (attached is 10x4sec exposures at ISO3200 at prime focus).

Cheers,
Tom