Beneath Our Radiant Southern Cross

[CapturingTheNight]

Hi all,
I had the best laid plans of the proverbial last night and set up to try and image the Crux and Carinae region. I did about two hours worth of images and they all look good but I must have too much rotation or somehing because I just cannot get DSS to stack them properly. It stacks the left of the frame featuring Crux well but turns the right of the frame into a blur. Really kicking myself for not getting a better polar allignment prior. Oh well. Still pretty happy with how the individual subs look so I thought I would share one. Would love to know what you think.

Canon 60D (unmoddified)
Canon 50mm F/1.8 @ F/4.5
1 x 300 seconds
ISO 800
Piggyback mounted on an unguided NEQ6 Pro Mount

Cheers
Greg

113402

[niko]

Greg,

that's a tremendous effort - so much detail and terrific colours. You've inspired me. I've just ordered a longer dovetail plate to mount the camera on a have a go at mounting camera directly to the HEQ5 mount.

great work.

niko

[rogerg]

Looks really quite nice.

I'm impressed by the colour balance considering it's from an unmodified camera.

There does look to be a blue colour cast over the image. Removing this will bring out the pink nebulosity which you've already captured so well, a lot more. You might also find the blue is being introduced by CA of the 50mm, I find that with my 50mm F/1.4.

Framing is quite nice but I'd like it a little higher so the star cluster under Eta isn't chopped in half.

I often find DSS won't accurately stack images, introducing trailing instead. My solution is to use RegiStar in those cases, the trailing just disappears then. I'm sure other packages might work just as well as RegiStar if you don't have a license, but I'm not sure on free ones. I keep meaning to try Maxim for those situations, never have used it for stacking.

I just read ... 1 x 300 seconds?! 1 frame! nice.

[Ross G]

A good photo Greg.

Very nice composition.


Ross.

[astronobob]

Top show Greg, I much like it also & I dig the detail :thumbsup:
Am however also seeing a tad of green/blue tinge ?
I must try my 50mm of this area, definately an inspiring Image, that looks very Coool !

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you so much for the great feedback Niko. :D Good luck with the new mounting plate. I would (if you have not got one already) also get a ball joint to attach the camera to the plate to allow for better framing of objects. I found that if I just attached the camera straight to the plate then you are limited to whatever angle the mount is at.



Thank you so much for your thoughts on this Roger :D I really appreciate it. I'll see what I can do about that blue/green cast. Being only one frame I might have stretched it a bit too far and introduced the cast somehow. Thanks for the tip re: Registar. I might have to check it out (yet more money :lol:) I agree with you on the framing of the shot. I should have had Eta Carina more in the middle right of frame. I'm also surprissed with how the colour turned out on this. After much experimentation I have worked out the perfect white balance for this camera and my very dark skies. When I point my telescope with an also unmoddified 1000D attached at The Carina Nebula I get a lot of blue.



Thank you very much Ross :D



Thank you very much Bob :D I'm glad I can inspire you to try this yourself. I'll see what I can do about that green/blue colour cast....

[leon]

Top capture Greg, love the wide field effect of your image, well done indeed.

Leon

[multiweb]

Wow! that's pretty cool. Noice! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Very nice Greg.

I had a play with it and it comes up very nicely with some specialised processing.

PM me if you want to see the result.

Greg.

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you very much Leon :D



I'm very glad you like it Marc :D Thanks



Thank you so much Greg :D I really appreciate that coming from you. I would love to see what you can do with it. I have just been having another play with it but can't seem to do much about that colour cast without reducing the star colour (which I love). I'll PM you now.

[stardust steve]

Fantastic result Greg. Was the glow surrounding the stars the result of the long exposure or processing afterwards? because this is a result i would love to achieve :thumbsup:

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you :D I'll be honest Steve and say that I am not entirely sure why it happened. It came straight out of the camera like this. I did about 20 identical shots and I would say only about a quarter of them had this glow. I think there might have been some high level smoke (lots of burning off around me lately) drifting through the field of view from time to time causing the light from the brighter stars to difuse a bit. I have seen a similar effect just as my lens starts to fog over. I'm guessing you could maybe simulate it by lightly breathing on the lens (like cleaning glasses, etc) towards the end of the exposure, but I have never tried it.
Cheers
Greg