Pointed my Lt8 at 50x at Eta just a couple of hours ago.
I must say, it look nothing remotely like the photo shown at the Home page!
Could not detect any nebulosity or traces of gas clouds and all I am seeing is just a star field.
I though, perhaps, the LT8 was pointing incorrectly, so I instructed it to point at the Jewel Box and it placed it dead center.I did the same thing with Acrux and the scope again, place it in the center.
So, why is the view of Eta so different, as I must be doing something wrong?
Magnification too high or perhaps, I am not using any filter?
Frustration, frustration........
Can some learned friends comment?
The main reason is probably the moonlight. the moon is 83% illuminated which is causing heaps of sky glow. A filter will really help (UHC or OIII), but mine is still being delivered, so I can't say much more than that.
hope this helps
I think you can't have had the right target. I used my finderscope to locate Eta Carinae last night, and the nebulosity was evident even in it!
The nebulosity extends for several degrees with a massive dark lane running through it. I would suggest you use the lowest EP power you have, and that you roam the skies in the region. The nebulosity should shout out at you.
Yes, Luna is likely to make the view a bit more dull that under darker skies. I suggest you try again tonight early on, before Luna is up, and report back how you went!
I am positive, that my Lt8 was pointing at Eta, as it correctly point to and centered the Jewel Box and Acrux near by.
My scope is 2000mm focal, F10 and using a 40mm ep with a 62 deg afov, that will gives it a 50x magnification and a fov of 1.25 deg.
Eta has a span of 80 minutes, so it should more or less fill the ep fov.
Strange that I could not detect or observe any nebulosity at all.
Everything seems to be in black and white....perhaps it is my eyes.
Will observe again tonight, weather permitting with with my other scope, a Skywatcher 120mm point to, at a lower mag of 30x, as my LT8 is stuck at 50x lowest.
I will be happy, if I can see anything bearing the slightest resemblance to the pic on the home page.What would be the optimum mag to view Eta??
Cheers!
I found with my first attempts I could not see it either. I woke up that the nebulosity is so large that it fills the field of view. Use the lowest power and slew around the area and you will see the nebulosity drop off when you leave the region. I realised what I was looking at when one very dark night I saw the homunculus nebula at very high power and got the scale of the rest of the structures. It is just a matter of teaching your brain to recognise what you are looking at.
Where Eta Carina lies, there is an enourmous star cluster (NGC 3532) smack bang between it and the Southern Cross, and it would have been right in the line of sight that you were mentioning.
It is VERY easy to confuse 3532 at first with Eta Carina. I've done it, and STILL do, thirty years on. Both Eta Carina and 3532 are just visible to the naked eye from urban areas. The trick is, once you've spoted something you believe to be Eta Carina, and you see no nebulosity (like you mentioned you hadn't!), you are not in the right place. You will need to keep paning the scope a little more to the west.
I've attached a sketch I made of Eta Carina through my 8" f/4 dob at 29X. I did it while the Moon was at first quarter too, much like it will be appearing now with the Moon up. If you didn't see this, it isn't your scope, you had just missed by 1 width of your field of view to the west - just missed, in other words, .
To make matters a little more interesting, there is a second giant and really bright cluster just to the south of Eta, only a little further away from it than 3532 is, and is as bright to the naked eye as both Eta and 3532. IT TOO will get you! . It's tell tale sign is the component stars are much brighter, fewer in number and much more widely space.
Your scope is a very good instrument. Once you've pinned Eta, you'll definetly know you've got the Real McCoy!
Like Ibrahim said too, the near full Moon doesn't help. And while a nebula filter does help, Eta Carina is still bright enough that you won't need a filter to make out its details.
I'm sure you'll pin it tonight with this info on board. Yet us know how you go.
One last thing, I don't know how much experience you've got with scopes, so I'm sorry if you already know not to expect to see the lovely pretty colours that we all see in photos of the sky. It doesn't work that way with our human eyes. Like I said, I don't know your experience, so I can't make the asumption that you already knew that. It's because you mentioned that you were disappointed that the image in your eyepiece didn't match what you saw in a photo. It never will. Have a lot through the Solar System and DSO Sketching sticky, it will contains many sketched examples of how you will see things through the eyepiece and so what to expect.
Everything seems to be in black and white....perhaps it is my eyes.
Do you mean black and white or greyscale? Forgive me if I am covering ground that you already know, but if you mean grey scale it is your eyes, Your human eyes that cannot detect colour at low illumination. When you say it doesn't look like the photo do you mean it's not in colour? If you look at DSOs your eyes use the low light rod cells which do not encode for colour. Your daytime cone cells come in 3 populations sensitive to different wavelengths so they encode colour. The rod cells are only one population and you will only see nebulae in grey. The Great Nebula in Carina (ie the Eta Carina nebula) should be readily seen as a grey mist and with patience you can observe many dark lanes and folds therein. You should also see that Eta Carina itself appears as a golden blob more than a star. The blob bit around it is the homunculus nebula. If you observe for some time you will find much to see.
Also your rod cells are absent from the fovea, the part of your retina that is the bit illuminated when you look straight at something. You will see more in DSOs if you look a little to one side of the bit that you're interested in as this will illuminate rod cells, not the insensitive cone cells.
As I said, apologies if you're already familiar with this.
Thanks Mental,
The pic you sent do look like what I observed last night but without the faint nebulosity that is evident in your photo.
I had viewed the Orion nebula on numerous occasion and the nebulosity stands out.Perhaps it is not fair to compare Eta to the Orion's as the latter is much brighter.I could make it out with my naked eye but not Eta.I guess, I expected too much of Eta.
I meant gray scale Patrick.I am very much a novice but already, I am putting a cap on my expectation.Your comment is welcomed too.
Yes, nearly anything in the night sky viewed through a reasonable sized telescope will be in shades of grey and often quite faint, it won't be like the photos of astronomical objects we often see published, or those on the telescope box.
I am currently putting together an 'expectation chart' for people that are thinking of purchasing a telescope.
All of the photographs we post here, and see from other sources of beautiful full colour galaxies and nebulae and planets are wonderful, but many people new to all this expect to see something similar through their telescope.
I'd like to have a chart that shows a 'typical view' of the more famous objects through a 'typical telescope' say a 3" or 4" refractor and an 8" or 10" reflector, so that people have some idea what to expect.
Anyone that wants to contribute any photographs or sketches of objects that they believe represent the view through the eyepiece, please drop me a line and I can add them to the chart, and make sure the source is acknowledged.
It will just be for posting here, not a commercial venture or anything, but if you do let me use an image, please make sure you have the rights to do so.
Keep trying Ian - but with dark skies and no Moon. It will be fairly unimpressive visually otherwise. Was there clearly a orange star in the middle? Eta Carina itself?
Yes there was an orange star but surprisingly, could not detect any vish of nebulosity.
I think it is a superb idea Pete.
The real time image through a scope will certainly put things in their proper perspective.I always wonder how a lot of these DSO will look like through a decent telescope ep so I can relate to them when I view them.
Time lapse pictures are fantastic,especially those process using multi frames stacker but a lot of novice cannot relate to them when viewing.
Finally with the aid of Sky Walk on my IPad, I can say with certainty that I viewed Eta just a moment ago on my 12x50 bino and my 120mm refractor!
The nebulosity was visible tonight..perhaps it was the viewing condition last night.
Thanks and cheers,
I observe Eta Carina regularly both through the scope and binos and naked eye. It sounds to me like high cloud could have been the problem- what looks like a nice clear night sometimes isn't necessarily so. On a good night along with some observing experience (I'm assuming you're new to the hobby?) you will see some great features, dark lanes etc. The moon as well will degrade the nebulosity. I assume you're observing without any house lights, street lights around you and if you wait for your eyes to get dark adapted (20mins) you will see much more. Averted vision as mentioned before, also greatly helps. Each night will provide a different view depending on the sky conditions, and those special nights when it puts on an amazing show, you will just about fall off your seat.
This is easily visible to the naked eye even with light pollution (not so sure if you view it from say the city, but I only live 15 mins away from the city and I see it easily. Allow your eyes to dark adapt- 10 mins minimum and use averted vision (looking just off set from it and it's large size and nebulosity should be very apparent.
To gauge the sky conditions for that area, I use the Omega Centauri globular cluster- if I have trouble seeing it naked eye, then I know not to expect to see too much in the way of faint fuzzies.
I'm glad you found in the binos - it puts on a great show in binos - low mag. the key. But throw on some high mag to get into the homunculus nebula and the keyhole!
Hi Ian, something else to consider is light pollution. I'm not sure where in the Melbourne area you are, but I'm in the eastern suburbs (well inside the Eastlink). From here the Eta Car nebula is quite easy to see despite the light pollution that means the LMC is usually very faint or invisible to the naked eye, and I don't see much except the brightest bits of Milky way (including, ironically, the Eta Car nebula area! - a consequence of big objects appearing brightest when you use low magnification). If you are NW of the CBD, the brightest light pollution will stretch up to the part of the sky Eta Car is in, adding to the challenge (I have difficulty seeing faint objects to my west). Add a Full Moon's light pollution and you won't see a great deal of the nebulosity round Eta Car. If you're much closer to the CBD, I wouldn't actually be all that surprised if on a moonlit night the nebulosiy was a challenge.
Having said that, from where I am, on a moonless night the nebulosity fills most of the field and with a UHC filter the low power field is filled and beyond with all manner of delicate textures, dust features and filaments of nebulosity that is hard to describe. On good nights I can see the small outlying nebula NGC3324 that lies between Eta Car and the bright diamond-shaped cluster NGC3293, and you might want to have a go at the two smaller nebulae NGC3576 and NGC3603 nearby if you have a sky as dark as mine. On a poor night, only the main V or triangle of nebulosity nearest Eta will be visible. At the moment I'm having an internal debate as to whether Eta Car beats the Orion Nebula for impressiveness - on good nights Eta is much bigger with more features to explore, though the ON is brighter.
The key with nebulae is patience and as dark a sky as you can manage though, and a nebula filter definitely helps loads from a light polluted site. Other bright high surface brightness nebulae you might want to have a go at just now are the Tarantula and its immediate suroundings (NGC2070 and nebulae nearby), NGC1763 (also LMC, the Bean Neb), and a little fainter is NGC2032. There are many more once you get your eye in! But trust your scope, it's plenty good enough to show you nice things. Just about all you will ever see of nebulae is in greyscale, but that they are still very beautiful to see once you appreciate what you are actually looking at (to me, actually seeing stuff is much more awe-inspiring than a photograph, even though you see less than the camera).
When you say the LT8 does that mean the Lightswitch Meade 8" scope? Dont these have an inbuilt camera for self alignment? If so (I might be wrong) why not take a snap of Eta Carina for confirmation?
Here is a quick pic of Eta I took the other night with my DSLR Canon 1000D, at ISO 1600 for 30 secs. As you can see, even a moderately good DSLR struggles to pick up the Nebulosity and its MUCH more sensitive to low light than your eye. Also, because of the filter internal to the camera, which mimics the eye's colour response, the nebula is hard to capture....
I have seen green hues in my old 12" dobsonian on the Orion Nebula, but nothing else showed any colour other than greys...our eyes just dont like low light as there isnt enough there to register the colour cones as mentioned previously.
Nebulae filters help a lot, a UHC-S would be a great one for cutting the sky glow down and dramatically improving contrast of nebulae. Worth a look, but it unfortunately wont bring out any colours.
Having said that, there are plenty of extraordinary things to look at around the place, even if they are muted greys and wispy to look at, globular clusters like 47 TUC and Omega Cenaturi have lovely star colours and you can almost fall into the scope if you stare at them long enough. Globulars are my favourite stops on my night sky tours....
Hi Suzy, Andy and Chris,
Thanks for all your comments.
I am a newbie to the hobby,so still finding my way around the night sky!
After having a look at the photos that you all so helpfully enclosed,showing the real, grey scale image through an ep, I found Eta on my 12x50 bino and on my 120x600 Skywatcher refractor with a 17mm Hyperion ep at 35x.
Last night, I pointed my LT8 at it with a 40mm GSO ep at 50x and observed it for a full 30 minutes.The LT8 do not have a lightswitch tech, so you have to level,point north and use 2 stars alignment manually.
I reckon 50x is too high a mag,as at that mag, the afov of my ep is 1.25 deg whereas Eta covers 2 deg(am I right?)
My initial confusion was relating to the full color, time lapsed photo of Eta that is so common on the internet which to someone new, bears few resemblance to the image through an eyepiece.
So, thanks everybody for all your assistance.
Well done on perservering Ian. Unfortunately we are spoiled by all the beautiful images that we see of deep space objects and many people are surprised by the faintness of many objects. It does cost us a lot of newbies.
Eta Carinae is one of the highlights of the southern sky and there is a lot of details to explore. Your scope should be capable of seeing the homonculus clearly especially if you get under dark skies and in good seeing you will see detail in it. I saw darks streaks through the brighter lobe the other night at 150x.
Also try to find a few of the dark patches that populate this area. It is a lovely sight so keep revisiting it and you will see more each time you go back.
.
. It's tell tale sign is the component stars are much brighter, fewer in number and much more widely space.
I'm glad you found her. She's beautiful!
