Yet another Eta - First "Decent" Light for new camera!

[DavidTrap]

Evening all,

First decent night's imaging in MONTHS!!! I almost have all of my new gear working together. I am just waiting on an adaptor from Precise Parts so I can put my focal reducer back into the imaging train.

Tonight I set out to do some testing of new equipment & software, namely PoleAlignMax (worked as advertised) and Focusmax (seems to work - I have NO IDEA what all the settings mean, but the automatic mode seemed pretty good). After getting those sorted by 8:30, I started some imaging runs on the Horsehead & Flame Nebula before moving on to Eta.

The attached image is a work, very much in progress. I saved one subframe to the network whilst the run was in progress and had a fiddle in photoshop on another computer.

This is just one Ha sub, stretched and a curve applied (grayscale curves in PS are weird!). No dark frames subtracted. My first go at processing Ha!

Hopefully I'll get some useful data, might even throw in a couple of RGB subs at the end of the night so I've got something extra to play with.

Now the next learning curve commences on how to process HaLRGB images!

Cheers
DT

[Mighty_oz]

That's a Real Nice image u got there for just 1 sub !
Easy to see your going to make some nice ones
Marcus

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Marcus,

Of course after basking in the glory by posting that image,
I went back down to the rig - battery powering mount had gone flat and next two subs were blurred messes!

Problem fixed, but 45mins lost fiddling! Now there are some clouds about.

I'll try for another five subs, but will be calling it a night after that.

DT

[Moonman]

Nice one David,

I really like that you can see some of those small dark globules of collapsing dust and gas. Eta Carinae is very much a "work in progress" in its own right. Funnily enough I'm posting my first attempt of Eta Carinae with the 350D in just a moment.

[Paul Haese]

Looks pretty good David. Nice and smooth but a larger scaled image would be preferable.

[gregbradley]

Very nice David. That's great the gear is all coming together even with the odd hiccup.

Greg.

[DavidTrap]

Thanks for the comments Gents.

I've posted in your thread Michael - great start with the 350D.

I managed to find time to stack the subs and fiddle a bit more in PS. Bring on the Astro-Imaging Conference so I can learn a bit more about processing.

Paul - I've attached a slightly larger scaled image 1024x768. Will get around to uploading something larger to somewhere else in due course. I should have the adapter for my focal reducer this week, so will be able to enlarge the field of view as well.

Also, here is my effort of the Horsehead & Flame nebulae. Only 5 subs of 10mins. Very noisy given the stretching required by a much dimmer object. I'll try for longer subs (thank goodness for accurate off-axis guiding) in due course (but that might have to wait until next Orion season).

Cheers
DT

[strongmanmike]

Well Dave, you have that nice rig of yours all setup neatly and these first lights look promising, exciting times :thumbsup:

Mike

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Mike - I've now just got to spend some time under the stars, watching the screen and fiddling to sort out the nuances of the system. If only I knew what I was looking for :question:

DT

[multiweb]

Beautiful Ha shot. Very detailed. Well done. :thumbsup:

[jenchris]

Oh David they're beautiful.
It's so nice to see such a well executed and eye drawing display

[DavidTrap]

Evening all,

Thanks again for the comments. I've finally gotten around to posting some full res images. Reasonably happy with Eta, but the Horse needs lots more data.

Eta Carina (http://users.tpg.com.au/dctrap/astrophotos/NGC3372Ha600sec.jpg)

Horse Head (http://users.tpg.com.au/dctrap/astrophotos/IC434Ha600sec.jpg)

Cheers
DT