The Southern Cross, Pointers and Eta Carinae Widefield

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

This image was taken from the Mudgee Star Party on the same night as my Scorpius and the Milky Way Widefield. It features a stunning area of sky, including the Pointers (Alpha and Beta Centauri) bottom right, the Southern Cross and the dark Coalsack (in Crux) in the centre, and the beautiful Eta Carinae nebula top left.

The image was taken with the Modded Canon 40D and 24-105mm lens, piggybacked on the ED80 while being guided on the EQ6. It consists of 8x 5 minute exposures at ISO1600, with the lens @ 35mm, f/5.0. Darks were subtracted using ICNR, and flat fields were calibrated.

I’ve wanted to capture a good widefield area of this part of sky for a long time, and it’s great to finally have an image of it that I’m happy with. There’s a bit of field curvature in the corners from the lens, but it’s not too noticeable.

There’s so much going on in this image I had to reduce the dimensions to keep the size down for attaching without compressing too much, so please click the link below to see the larger, much more spectacular version.

The Southern Cross, Pointers and Eta Carinae Widefield (1200px, ~1mb).

Thanks for looking.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Great field Mike. Colors and focus are excellent.

[Ric]

Top shot Mike, that's a lovely FOV.

Cheers

[DeanoNZL (Adrian)]

Lovely coverage Mike.
Good to see you are still getting some scope time in!

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks guys, appreciate the comments.

[Tilt (Michael)]

Nice widefield work Mike, the dark lanes give the central area a nice sense of density. Just wondering though, is there something odd going on with the stars in the top right hand corner of the frame?

Michael

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Yes excellent shot, yeh it's fairly simple imaging but boy shots like this look great when done well

Mike

[gregbradley]

Fabulous widefield shot. Very nicely done.

You know in Photoshop there is a filter for lens distortions. Its very good. You can adjust for curvature and all sorts of things. It under "filter/distort" in Photoshop.

Greg.

[duncan]

Excellent image Mike, this will come in handy for future references for sure.
Cheers,
Duncan

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Insane guiding and focus Mike, and I like the slightly blue bias, a nice change from dull red.