First DSO-Carina Nebula

[Cosmic]

Hi all,

I had some recent luck with astrophotography to my surprise. With a quick dirty drift alignment and just a single 60 sec exposure @ 1600 iso. The equipment used canon 550d, neq6, 8 inch newton and no coma corrector or guiding. It turned out good, I think anyway. I have been having problems with DSS and the raw images, so if anyone knows why im getting 1/8 of my image appearing please advice me. But here is one snap :)

I tell ya what you cant beat the tranquility and views of the dark ocean after a full on day with the kids! :thumbsup:

Dan

[dugnsuz]

Nice first go Dan - some nice detail in there.
I've heard the 550D can be quite noisy for astro-work, but your image doesn't look too bad at all - especially for iso1600.
Can't help with the DSS problem I'm afraid.
Keep 'em coming
Doug

[h0ughy]

well for a single 60second shot it shows you were onthe object. Any reason why you couldnt go longer or get a lot more repetitive 60 second shots?

[Cosmic]

Yeah I had heard that to but I guess darks would fix that. No probs so far but early days. Thanks for the encouragement Doug, ill keep em coming :thumbsup:



Hi Dave,
I ended up taking around one hours worth of pics, well the battery died on me...bugger. I did other exposures 40 sec 800, 30 sec 1600 ect ect. DSS didnt like my RAW images that the 550 was giving it. I might just chage the format to bitmap or something and stack that :question:

But with a better drift alignment next round ill try for 2-3min 800 or 400 iso and see what I can produce :) I never had the eq6 on sidereal tracking so that stuffed alignment up a bit ha :screwy: I know now for next time.

Dan

[h0ughy]

do you have the latest version of DSS?

[Cosmic]

Yeah 3.3.2. I going to try a few things and cross my fingers.

[Cosmic]

Ok I played with DSS and change the image to TIFF. Excellent the program recognized the subs this time. But after processing and stacking..(hours later) im left with a black and white/bright image. Hmm no color.

Dan

[multiweb]

It's very good. The colors are nice, so is the focus. Repro is pushed a bit too hard. All you need now is sort out your field then you're on your way. :thumbsup:

[Helo]

Hi Cosmic & all; Just piggybacking off your post as I did my first Eta Carinae this week also. Used a 500D with a 200mm lens piggybacked on my CPC1100 (not polar aligned yet but hope to be there soon) and was able to stack them in DSS. I have had problems with DSS also in some cases but I think it has been an exposure issue and rejects them if underexposed. For objects where I had good exposures, they stacked fine as RAW files but underexposed would not stack unless I used the JPEG files I saved at the same time (very underexposed Sombrero Galaxy - being a little too ambitious :prey2:). I am finding the processing a daunting task in Photoshop CS5, any tips? Thx. Peter

[Cosmic]

Hi Peter,

Im by no means a subject matter expert on astrophotography and image processing. But I will say one thing to you, experiment. Thats what I have done and it may be time consuming but worth it. As for polar alignment, thats a given to get those pinpoint more cleaner images. I'm on the hunt also for tutorials on image processing with astro snaps ill pm you if I come across any good ones. Sorry I could be of any more help, im at the beginners stage to.

Well im going to call this the final image. After a few hours of playing around getting to know DSS better this is what I have now produced.

[graphworlok]

My first post here!

I took some images of Eta Carina (and other things!) a few days ago - i used DSS and RAW images from an EOS40D. just under half an hour of 60 second exposures, ISO800 (i think), 18-55mm canon lense@55mm with F5.6

Scaled down image (from 10MP size, uncropped!) is attached

Unguided, camera on an second hand EQ3 mount from ebay with clock motor.

[Visionoz]

Hi Guys

Perhaps going to here: http://www.atalas.net/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=4 and look near the bottom right-hand corner and there you'll find links to several astro-processing tutorials that one of the IIS member had presented here before - worth a read and very informative

HTH
Cheers
Bill