Carina Nebula

[Mickoid (Michael)]

It's Carina time again! This time I shot it with a 500mm Tamron Mirror lens at F8, Canon modded 550d mounted on a tripod using my Nano Tracker, nice and light. The strong breeze didn't help the tracking on this light rig but the stars are NEARLY round. The colours came out nice at least. A dark sky helps too.

5 X 40 seconds, 3200iso, darks and flats applied.

[Steve Pattie (Steve Pattie)]

Not a bad shot. The wind really makes life difficult.

[Atmos (Colin)]

Really nice result for such a long focal length on a really light mount :thumbs up:

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Holy cow that's great for a mirror lens!

I bought two of the things a few years ago and both had too many optical problems for astronomy, or anything for that matter. You got a good one.

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Atmos

Really nice result for such a long focal length on a really light mount :thumbs up:

Thanks Colin, you obviously appreciate the technical difficulties that go with using this kind of configuration.

Originally Posted by Steve Pattie

Not a bad shot. The wind really makes life difficult.

Tell me about it Steve. I don't know any other pursuit that requires so much to be going right to achieve a good result.

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

Holy cow that's great for a mirror lens!

I bought two of the things a few years ago and both had too many optical problems for astronomy, or anything for that matter. You got a good one.

I had researched about the better and cheaper mirror lenses and Tamron was mentioned a fair bit so I looked around for a second hand one and found this 500mm f8. The only problem I have found is boken appearing in some of the brighter stars at the edge of the frame. Other than that, they are a little soft compared to a good refractor but I can live with that. Nothing Photoshop can't improve!