Eta Carina Nebula, a less imaged part

[rat156]

Hi All,

This image is part of a series I'm doing, of the nebulae around Eta Carina. Some of the nebulae are really quite beautiful and not imaged much in high resolution. You get glimpses of the nebulae in wide field images of the area, but mostly they are ignored in favour of the more famous central part of the nebula.

Anyway, I hope you like it. Narrowband image, mapped in HST palette, tweaked in my usual fashion. This is the first pass, I may change the colours.

I would appreciate some feedback re the amount of sharpening used, the halos around the stars aren't from sharpening the stars, but come from the increase in brightness of the nebula around the stars with the stars deselected during the sharpening process. I really went to town on the sharpening and may have overdone it, but I love the detail it brings out.

Two full nights imaging, about 7 hours Ha, 3 each of SII and OIII. ASA N12 scope on PMX, STT8300 camera.

Larger version here.

Share and Enjoy.

Cheers
Stuart

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Oddly plastic Stuart, bit overdone. I get this weird feeling its a bit blown too, a bit "urgent" but yet actually not. Tone it down, or ill rip your arms off, (that kind of urgent).

[gregbradley]

I really like this image. I take it sharpening was done globally with stars removed. Perhaps the sharpening is overdone and is still best done selectively rather than globally.

Your tracking must have been superb and stars look great.

Greg.

[jase (Jason)]

Sharp as a knife Stuart. A knife you can use against Fred as he attempts to rip your arms off. I enjoyed the view. If you were to convert it to greyscale, I'd say its a fine arts project. Narrowband lets you get away with this style, its kind of forgiving. I think you could improve on it by not clipping the background and still obtain the contrast you want to achieve. A very cool image.

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Superb detail. Had fun comparing your image with our shot using the 20" PlaneWave. The bits that aren't clipped to black are excellent - feature by feature we agree to high precision. Reassuring!

The colours would look great on the wall of the art gallery but perhaps they are a bit all-or-nothing, and the subtle coexistence of H-alpha and OIII is in danger of being lost.