Milky Way - Carina and the Cross

[2020BC (Bill Christie)]

Exposure: 14 x 2mins ISO1600 (4 darks)
Lens: 50mm EF-S II f1.8 @f6.3
Camera: Canon 350D unmod
Mount: LXD-75 unguided

For the nice big image click here (only 600 KBytes)

A cropped sample is attached below. Hit the link above for the widefield.

[jase (Jason)]

Nice work Bill. Is this the full frame or a crop? - my only comment is that Beta Crucis is a little too close to the edge of the left frame. If you've got more data to play with, I think shifting the crop slightly left would provide a more aesthetic view. None the less, it is still well composed.

Great website you have too.

[dugnsuz (Doug)]

Beautiful pic Bill,
I love widefields (my new bumpersticker!!!)
Very nice.
Cheers
Doug

[leon]

Good one Bill, I'm with Doug, wide fields rule.

Leon

[Ric]

Very nice Bill, such a colourful and rich area.
Lovely image, widefields always give a great sense of perspective.

Cheers

[2020BC (Bill Christie)]

Thanks for the encouragement guys.

Originally Posted by jase

...Beta Crucis is a little too close to the edge of the left frame. If you've got more data to play with, I think shifting the crop slightly left would provide a more aesthetic view. None the less, it is still well composed.

Great website you have too.

Yes, agreed. Crux is too close to the edge. It is a 3/4 crop. The right quarter has been chopped off to fit 1280x1024 and little bits from the other sides were cropped to remove alignment edges. Field of view is still about 20 degrees.

I only took this shot to scan the Carina area - looking for targets for the Orion 80ED. The image turned out okay despite a major amount of fireworks lighting up the sky and all the smoke drifting across. Only in some of the subs can you see the smoke. Another benefit of averaging many subs. I was very pleased with the result overall. Maybe next time I'll frame it better.

Cheers.