[naskies (Dave)]

Here's a shot of the Eta Carina Nebula from early this morning using my Canon 5DmkII + 70-200 f/2.8 IS II at 200 mm, f/5.6, ISO 400, 52x 185 sec subs (2 hr 40 min total), processed with darks/flats/dark flats/bias frames.

The warmer weather resulted in a crazy amount of noise on my SLR. The dark frames helped, but without dithering it's almost like salt-and-pepper field of black dots.

I tried to shoot a wide field including Eta Carina, the Southern Pleiades, and the NGC 3532 open cluster, but I haven't been able to remove the light pollution gradient across the image. See the second image - it's most intense in the bottom-right corner.

Any tips/suggestions?