Eta Carina Nebula in SHO

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

I realised after starting this that Mike (strongmanmike) had posted a very similar orientation is his Mystic Mountain post (wonderful work Mike btw).

This was just "accidental" in my case. My main target was M83 but had an hour or so each night (over 3 nights) before it rose high enough, and so grabbed some H, S and O data on Eta over those 3 early evening periods whilst waiting. The angle of the camera was set for a good guide star for the OAG on M83 - and happened to coincide with this angle on Eta that Mike championed. So ... apologies, Mike, for any perceived plagiarism!! But once I realised it was similar to your angle and saw what an interesting result you'd got, I stuck with it

Taken in suburban Adelaide with a GSO RC8 and ZWO 294MM Pro on a Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. And kind of as a consolation for the fact I wasn't able to image at a gathering in a dark sky site this weekend - curse you COVID!!

Full res on Astrobin here.

I find it very reminiscent of the Fighting Dragons of Ara when presented like this.

P.S. There are a couple of faint reflections of the secondary of the scope here caused by the ultra bright Eta Carina. I should do something to process that out ... or better still somehow reduce the reflections. Tips/ideas appreciated.

[RyanJones]

Absolutely wonderful Paul. Great depth in your dark nebulosity and glorious defraction lines. A shame about that big reflection in the bottom left. Otherwise an absolute cracker.

Cheers

Ryan

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

Thanks Ryan.

And there is another reflection top right. I think it is the microlens array reflectiing up to the filter and back.

Seems to be a problem whenever there is a brightish star in the frame with Has particularly.

[Dave882 (David)]

Beautiful! There’s so much detail in that dust wow!!

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

Thanks. It was good seeing (at least for the Ha daya), but BlurXTerminator helps resolve it in decon too.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Lots of detail in this image, I personally would like a bit more saturation but that's subjective

[kosborn (Kevin)]

Really nice image. The border between dark nebula and emission nebula is always my favourite.

Kevin

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

Thanks Nik and Kevin.

I think you're right Nik. A bit undersaturated.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Really super image Paul, lovely colour, details and resolution, that BlurExterminator is a game changer. I still don't quite know how I feel about it yet though..learned PSF's..? kinda feels like steroids For comparison, my version used no steroids, ie no Blurexterminator nor any other deconvolution, just DDP and unsharp mask in Astroart and and basic sharpening in PS, otherwise, I just relied on my scope (1120mmFL) and the good seeing at Eagleview . Oh and I don't own compositions happy to share any and all orientations or crops of the sky with you my friend, you dun good

Mike

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

Thanks Mike.

Yeah. If any consolation re PSFs, I do manual PSFs with it (found using PI's Dynamic PSF tool) rather than auto. I am/was reticent too re BlurX but, as long as it is just used for decon (for which it was trained) I think it seems honest and above board. But happy for the community to go the other way and I will switch back to Lucy-Richardson for decon - and welcome back the wiggly worms into my images

I have uploaded a new version to Astrobin (link above updated) which increases sat a bit more (thanks Nik) and reduces the obviousness of the reflections (Photoshop's healing tool - a bit more AI I expect ).

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

P.S. BlurX seems to do very well with dusty regions - here and also in Centaurus A. In other images it is good, but not really better than can be done by regular decon and subsequent sharpening techniques.

[kosborn (Kevin)]

Originally Posted by DiscoDuck

I am/was reticent too re BlurX but, as long as it is just used for decon (for which it was trained) I think it seems honest and above board. But happy for the community to go the other way and I will switch back to Lucy-Richardson for decon - and welcome back the wiggly worms into my images

I agree. Looking at some images on the interweb, people seem to use it turned up to 11 at almost any stage in processing, but when it's used subtly as a deconvolution tool, it works very well.

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

To feed into that BlurX debate, another trick I used to improve detail was to use Ha as a luminance layer having done the SHO image i.e. using the SHO as the colour info. Works ok as long as there are no regions of the image with no Ha but some OIII! (e.g. Helix) but on things like the Dragons and this it is viable IMHO i.e. there are things other than BlurX at work here!

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Yep that extra saturation, though subtle gives it more impact, lovely image mate

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

Thanks Nik.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by DiscoDuck

- and welcome back the wiggly worms into my images

Noooooooooooooooooooo!

Mike

[matlud (Mathew)]

Fantastic Paul, the latest version looks great!
Cheers, Mat

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

Thank you, Mat.

[Craig_]

Beautiful image! I've been working on this one (again) myself recently, but at a wider FOV.

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

Thanks Craig. Looking forward to seeing your image.