Eta Carinae Nebula

[Lognic04 (Logan)]

Hi all!
Here is probably my best picture to date!
I took this at LMDSS, Heathcote (bortle 1.5). Surprisingly only with one hour worth of data! It was a lot easier than i expected to process. Hardly any noise showed up. (though jpeg compression has added its own noise...) For an unmodded cam there is heaps of Ha there!
I'm really happy with this one!

Equipment used:

• CGEM mount, autoguided
• Takahashi MT-160 at f/4.9 (reduced from 1000mm to 776mm)
• Canon EOS 700D DSLR
• ZWO 60mm guidescope/ DMK21 guidecam

Image data:

• ISO 800
• 5 minute exposures
• 12 frames
• Taken with SGP
• Processed in Pixinsight

Processing details:

Preprocessing:

• Select best images with subframeselector
• Calibrate with darks and bias frames
• Debayer frames
• Align frames
• Normalize with localnormalization
• Stack with imageintegration!

Linear phase processing:

• Crop a bit
• roughly align colour channels with linearfit
• no DBE - didnt need it here
• PCC - calibrates colours using stars as a reference
• Deconvolution
• Add stars back in via /u/burscikas 's (on reddit) method
• Small amount of TGV and MMT denoise using jon rista method
• Repaired HSV separation script to fix pink star cores

Linear stage:

• Maskedstretch
• DarkStructureEnhance to add more contrast to darker areas
• Curves,Saturation
• Morphological Transformation
• Sharpening with MLT and thats it! Thanks for checking out my post!

[RickS (Rick)]

Nice result, Logan!

[Peter Ward]

Really like the star colours...but being an un-modded camera, the nebula itself looks thin and is the wrong colour.

More the pity, as attention to the essentials (tracking/focus/guiding) is great.

Might be time to ditch the DSLR and look at a dedicated astro-cam.

Stick with it

[Lognic04 (Logan)]

Originally Posted by RickS

Nice result, Logan!

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Really like the star colours...but being an un-modded camera, the nebula itself looks thin and is the wrong colour.

More the pity, as attention to the essentials (tracking/focus/guiding) is great.

Might be time to ditch the DSLR and look at a dedicated astro-cam.

Stick with it

Thanks also! I wish i could get an astro cam, but they are really expensive and out of my budget at the moment

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Nice framing Logan and I also like star colours - well done

[Lognic04 (Logan)]

Originally Posted by Slawomir

Nice framing Logan and I also like star colours - well done

Thanks!

[gb44 (Glenn)]

Hi

I just got the 700d and want to ask whether you used any of the onboard white balance adjustments, or whether they may be useful?

Having used a modified 350d for ages I know there is alot more red detail there.

Thought of getting the mod done?

GlennB

[bigjoe (JOSEPH)]

Certainly keep at it Logan all basics right..Dslr needs modding , though great result for this camera and processing.
bigjoe.

[Lognic04 (Logan)]

Originally Posted by gb44

Hi

I just got the 700d and want to ask whether you used any of the onboard white balance adjustments, or whether they may be useful?

Having used a modified 350d for ages I know there is alot more red detail there.

Thought of getting the mod done?

GlennB

Hi Glenn,
Because i process after taking the shot, the white balance doesn't matter because it can be adjusted after imaging. I keep my white balance on daytime though.
Unfortunately i cant mod this camera because i use it for daytime as well.

Originally Posted by bigjoe

Certainly keep at it Logan all basics right..Dslr needs modding , though great result for this camera and processing.
bigjoe.

Thanks!