My Second Attempt at Astrophotography!

[Eternal]

It's Eta Carina taken from my heavily light polluted unit in Bankstown. The equipment details are as follows:

Telescope: Skywatcher 8" Newtonian
Mount: Skywatcher HEQ5 (I upgraded from my EQ5 and it's MUCH better)
Guidescope & Camera: None. I'm having too much hassles trying to find a guide star. I think my next purchase is going to be a diagonal with a flip mirror and a cheapie planetary webcam.
Main Camera: Canon EOS 400D (prime focus) with 2" UHC-S Baader filter attached.
Imaging: 10 x 15 second exposures at ISO1600, 5 x darks, 5 x offsets, no flats. I had to take short exposures as I did no guiding. Spent about 4 hours drift aligning though (well it seemed like 4 hours).
Image Processing: Images stacked in DeepSkyStacker and enhanced (badly) in Photoshop CS2.

I'm a lot happier with this one than I was with my first attempt. Looking at the Eta Carina's on this forum though, it seems I've got a hell of a long way to go!

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

good attempt none the less. I will be using a similar setup (canon 400D + Sywatcher 8"f6) so its good to see the results.

[Phil]

Great photo for your secound attamped. Keep then caming
Phil

[sheeny (Al)]

Looks pretty damn good to me! A lot better than I can currently do anyway!

Well done,

Al.

[spearo (Frank)]

Keep at it mate, I know what you mean about the frustrations of looking for a bright guide star!
incidentally, this image comes out very well when put through noiseware community edition (free- see link: http://www.noiseware.com/download.aspx)
frank

[Eternal]

Here's the image through Noiseware Community Edition.

[Ric]

Hi Eternal, I think that they are very good images for your second go, you have crisp clear stars and good depth in the nebula itself, it's probably the LP that is throwing you off a bit.
I think that if you can image from a dark sky spot you will be pleasantly surprised with your results.

looking forward to seeing more from you

Cheers

[spearo (Frank)]

Well done,
What a difference.
frank

[Eternal]

Originally Posted by Ric

Hi Eternal, I think that they are very good images for your second go, you have crisp clear stars and good depth in the nebula itself, it's probably the LP that is throwing you off a bit.
I think that if you can image from a dark sky spot you will be pleasantly surprised with your results.

looking forward to seeing more from you

Cheers

The light pollution is my biggest problem, next to my guide scope. It's my belief that the red you can see on the left hand side of the image is purely light pollution from a very bright street light just over my fence. However WSAAG have a viewing night out at Linden on the 17th March. Here's hoping for good weather.