The Homunculus Nebula: Mewlon 210 vs Hubble.

[Dennis]

From Wikipediia.
The Homunculus Nebula is a bipolar emission and reflection nebula surrounding the massive star system Eta Carinae, about 7,500 light-years (2,300 parsecs) from Earth.

The nebula is embedded within the much larger Carina Nebula, a large star-forming H II region. From the Latin homunculus meaning Little Man, the nebula consists of gas which was ejected from Eta Carinae during the Great Eruption, which occurred ~7,500 years before it was observed on Earth, from 1838 to 1845.

It also contains dust which absorbs much of the light from the extremely luminous central stellar system and re-radiates it as infra-red (IR). It is the brightest object in the sky at mid-IR wavelengths.

Image Details:
Taken with a Tak Mewlon 210 F11.5 with Tak x.16 Extender and the (uncooled) Player One Saturn SQR Mono camera. After watching the relevant Adam Block tutorials for PixInsight, I was able to process 345 x 1 sec frames and arrive at the results below.

Hubble Overlay:
The colour overlay is a Hubble Telescope image reduced in size to fit my tiny offering.

PixInsight Image Solver:
The Image Solve Script in PixInsight provided the following data:
Resolution - 0.219 arcsec/px
Focal distance - 3544.26 mm
Pixel size - 3.76 um

I have also attached a 60x30 sec crop from the centre of the frame.

Cheers

Dennis

[gregbradley]

A fantastic result Dennis.

Greg.

[kosborn (Kevin)]

Great image. It is definitely a challenge to capture given its small size and high brightness!

Kevin

[Dennis]

Thanks Greg and Kevin, I appreciate your comments.

I just found some RGB data taken on 17th Feb with my QHY268M Pro at a lesser FL of 1940mm and have added it to the LUM taken with the PlayerOne Saturn SQR Mono at 3544mm.

Cheers

Dennis

[Dave882 (David)]

Great result and super detail! I’m trying to get a good closeup of this but it’s surprisingly difficult and reliant on good seeing conditions.
Well done

[alpal]

Hi Dennis,
you've achieved great resolution with lucky imaging.
I did a thorough search on Google and only the image from John
with a 350mm Newt compares on this site:
https://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/...d.php?t=188766

The best other image I can find except for Hubble is from a professional
1 meter telescope in Chile:
https://twitter.com/peachastro/statu...900482/photo/1

I think we'd all like to have a go on that target.
Well done.

cheers
Allan

[Dennis]

Thank you for your comments David and Allan, I appreciate them.

CCDStack has mostly been my goto image processing application, but it struggles with large sets of images.

I have previously dabbled in PixInsight and recently decided to knuckle down to better understand PI and its many capabilities. To this end, I purchased the Adam Block Fundamentals video tutorials last week and took a deep dive into WPBB, Cosmetic Calibration, Local Normalisation and the Screen Stretch Function and came away feeling so much more confident in using PI.

There is still so much to learn but it is nice to now feel confident with some of the more basic fundamentals.

I used @Focus3 in The Sky X Pro for automated focusing. I think I also need to check the collimation of the Mewlon 210 when I have more time (and cloud free skies!).

Thanks for your research Allan and the links you provided, I suspect I’ll have another go and try exposures of ½ sec and 2 secs to see what data they provide.

Cheers

Dennis

EDIT: I took the Damian Peach image and overlaid it on my Lum data and uploaded the results.

[Dave882 (David)]

The shorter the exposure the better it will get but the sky has to be agreeable. I’ve been experimenting with heaps of short subs and pretty much need to be at 100ms or lower with wavelet sharpening to fully take advantage of “lucky imaging”. I had a couple of good nights this week and hopefully will post my results soon…

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by Dave882

The shorter the exposure the better it will get but the sky has to be agreeable. I’ve been experimenting with heaps of short subs and pretty much need to be at 100ms or lower with wavelet sharpening to fully take advantage of “lucky imaging”. I had a couple of good nights this week and hopefully will post my results soon…

Hi Dave

Are you taking "stills" e.g. FITs images or are you capturing video files (AVI or SER) using apps like Firecapture or Sharpcap?

Cheers

Dennis

[Dave882 (David)]

Originally Posted by Dennis

Hi Dave

Are you taking "stills" e.g. FITs images or are you capturing video files (AVI or SER) using apps like Firecapture or Sharpcap?

Cheers

Dennis

I just did the Homunculus last night actually and managed to catch some really nice seeing - 20ms AVIs in ASICAP (Sharpcap equivalent) - 65,000 frames. I've just finished processing the data it's looking really nice!! The quantity of data from fits files would be impractical

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by Dave882

I just did the Homunculus last night actually and managed to catch some really nice seeing - 20ms AVIs in ASICAP (Sharpcap equivalent) - 65,000 frames. I've just finished processing the data it's looking really nice!! The quantity of data from fits files would be impractical

Great - sounds like a big processing day ahead.

Cheers

Dennis

[Paul Haese]

Nice work Dennis. Always of interest to read your posts.

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

Nice work Dennis. Always of interest to read your posts.

Thanks Paul, I appreciate your comments and likewise, I have enjoyed watching you push the HW and SW boundaries on IIS from the humble ToUcam days of early 2000, all the way up to your current project at Swan Reach Imaging Services.

Be well and best wishes with the new venture.

Cheers

Dennis

[Paul Haese]

Originally Posted by Dennis

Thanks Paul, I appreciate your comments and likewise, I have enjoyed watching you push the HW and SW boundaries on IIS from the humble ToUcam days of early 2000, all the way up to your current project at Swan Reach Imaging Services.

Be well and best wishes with the new venture.

Cheers

Dennis

It's been a long walk since the early 2000's. I haven't done any planetary imaging for a year or so now. I am trying automate a system for use at Swan Reach, which I may or may not hire out in the long run. I just don't want to sit up and watch seeing on nights of average seeing anymore and would prefer to automate capture. I can sit at home now and capture but it still requires sitting up for hours after my bed time.

Interestingly, prior to early 2000's I was doing DSO with film which started in the 1980's and hypering it to get better performance. Things have changed a lot since then and even in the last 10 years. Camera performance now is way better than some of the big name brands were putting out just 10 years ago. It's been a real revolution.

We hope SR will provide a suitable income in time but for now we are enjoying the imaging and the very dark and still skies.