Eta Carina wide field

[Itchy]

Hi Everyone

I was up at Ken Charlwood's place last night, hoping to get in some imaging before the moon rose. Unfortunately as soon as the sun went down the wind came up (I thought it was supposed to happen the other way around). Of course once the moon did arrive, the wind subsided a little, so I had a go at wide field with my $30 Luminar lens. Here is the result.

Eta Carina region.
Canon 300D (Unmodified), piggy backed on my LXD55 SN10.
Luminar 135mm lens at f4.0, UHC-S filter (taped on the end- I'll have to get a step ring!).
17x2min at ISO 800.
Processed in ImagePlus 2.75 (calibration/stacking), ABE (to remove the gradient provided by the moon) and Photoshop CS2(Levels, curves, noise reduction).

http://users.bigpond.net.au/itchysastro/carinaregionfinal.jpg

Comments welcome as always

Cheers

[iceman]

WOW! :eyepop:

Looks great to me Tony! Nice job!

[Lester]

I like that a lot. Star images are very good and nebula is fantastic, will improve when the moon leaves.

Tell me about your Luminar lens, coz the results are very good for $30. I have spent many hundreds of dollars on lenses that don't perform as well as yours.

[Itchy]

Thanks Lester.

I picked up the lens at a local market, second hand. It is Japanese in origin, I think. It has a pentax screw mont (m42). I needed to source a M42 to EOS adapter and eventually got one that cost about $20, shipped. I am pretty happy with its performance. Of course, great processing tools such as Imagesplus help a lot too.

Thanks again

[RB]

I love how the Eta region just jumps out from the background, bursting with colour.
Great result Tony.

[Striker]

$30 lense.......Not bad at all.

[Lester]

Tony, is the lens wide open at f4?

Still can't get over it $30

[Lester]

Don't worry Tony, I tracked down your LMC shot with this lense=f3.5
Now that would make a great poster enlargment.