I set up the scope on a very windy evening after a strong cool change came through, with the aim of learning some more about the polar alignment. After midnight, the Moon had almost set and I thought about trying a few shots, but there was no point in setting up the guiding because of the wind. But having had a go at Uranus and found a few subs not trailed at 30 seconds, I turned to Eta Carinae, which was only about 20deg up in the SE, set the camera snapping and left it for 45 minutes. The result is here!
35 x 30 second exposures at ISO 1600 (yes Raymo, the ISO is higher
though I'm not actually quite sure why!), 150mm f/5 Newtonian on HEQ5pro. I discarded 44 more exposures due to the wind and periodic error. Stacked and processed in PI and a few tweaks in Photoshop 'cos my PI kung fu isn't all there yet!
Larger version of
the wider view is here.
Larger version of the
central area (full resolution) is here.