Eta Carina

[AstroTom (Tom)]

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would post my photos of the Eta Carina Nebula I took last weekend. It was a very frustrating night as I had just got set up and then the clouds starting rolling over. It resulted in me having to photo between the clouds. It finally cleared up around midnight but then the wind started up.

The photos below consist of 90 x 60s lights, unguided and 15 darks all stacked in DSS and then processed in Photo Shop and Lightroom. The following equipment was used.

Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120 refractor
AZEQ6 Mount
Canon EOS 6D with Astronomik light pollution filter

I used an ISO3200 on this object and the 6D camera had really good noise control. Normally I use a lower ISO but thought I would continue on with this to see how the photo would come out.

When zoomed really far in there is a little star trailing, but overall I'm happy with the result.

I have posted two photos, as I can't decide which I prefer. Basically they are the same image out of DSS, but they have both been manipulated in Lightroom to give two results. The Astronomik filter always causes the images to be a little blue and I think one of the images may need to have the blue controlled a little more.

Anyway I'm interested to hear others views.

Regards,

Tom

[Eden (Brett)]

Hi there Tom,

A really nice image , I'd be happy with that for sure. What sort of Astronomik LP filter are you using?

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Nice one Tom lots of faint nebulosity and detail there!

Looks like the filter has been messing with the colour balance as they both look a little blue/green to me, and while I've not tried using a filter yet, since I've had my camera modded I've had to dial the red channel back to make it look more pleasing...so maybe one thing to try is to use the grey picker in a curves layer and pick a pixel in a dark area of the image. That should take a rough stab at the colour balance and it should be easier to work on from there. Anyhow, just a thought.

In reality, how do or should objects really look? Well, IMO that's a very good question. It's your image, so it looks good when you like it

[raymo]

nice job Tom; I much prefer the second one. The first looks unnatural
totally immersed in blue.
raymo

[AstroTom (Tom)]

Hi All,

Thanks for your feedback.

Eden, the filter was just a pure light pollution filter. It is the CLS EOS XL clip filter for unmodified 5D and 6D cameras. To install it you have to lock the mirror up, insert the filter and then switch mirror lock off.

When I photographed the Orion nebula earlier in the year I noticed that the filter gave a very blue image, but after stacking and processing in DSS a lot of the blue was gone, but there was still a bit of a tinge there. I had to process quite a bit to get a more balanced image. I read up on the filter and the blue tinge and its seems that it is fairly common with these filters. Luckily I can work around it and if I'm at the dark sky area I take the filter out too so I don't have the issue

Raymo, I think I agree with you, the second image is better. I was trying to make my mind up last night after I reworked the first image. I may have a play around again tonight and try and get a little more red into it.

Regards,

Tom