Eta Carinae through LX90 / DLSR

[Mark_Heli (Mark)]

Hi All,

Last night I decided to take advantage of the clear moonless sky in Sydney and take some new images. I managed to get pictures of the Eta Carinae Nebula and Markarian's Chain.

I always find the shear scale of these objects amazing. We really do live in an interesting universe...

So far I have only processed the image of Eta Carinae which is attached. Details below..

Date: 13/5/2012
Location: Sydney
Telescope: Meade LX90
Mount: Standard Alt / Az
Camera: Canon EOS 550d
Exposures: 15 @ 25 seconds
Stacked using DSS

Cheers,
Mark

[Poita (Peter)]

Wow, nice work for an Alt/Az mount!

[BENHINSPETER (Ben)]

Nice shot Mark!

Its amazing to see a star blowing up in slo-mo!

[stardust steve (Steve)]

yep, gets a like from me. Good image.
Go the 500-550D's

[trek1701 (Mark)]

Hi Mark

Did DSS use RAWS or JPEGS to produce this result?

Mark

[Mark_Heli (Mark)]

Hi All,

Thanks for the comments...

Originally Posted by trek1701

Hi Mark

Did DSS use RAWS or JPEGS to produce this result?

Mark

I actually converted the canon RAW files to TIFFs using the EOS utility. I then loaded the TIFFs in DSS for stacking and saved the output back into TIFF format. Finally I processed the curves and levels in GIMP and exported to JPG.

Cheers,
Mark

[trek1701 (Mark)]

Thanks Mark
Because I’ve been having trouble using DSS using the RAW files, they all come out long and skinny, Jpegs are ok. I’ll try your method.

Cheers Mark

[CapturingTheNight (Greg)]

Originally Posted by trek1701

Thanks Mark
Because I’ve been having trouble using DSS using the RAW files, they all come out long and skinny, Jpegs are ok. I’ll try your method.

Cheers Mark

You need Deep Sky Stacker Beta for it to read the latest RAW files properly like the ones from the 60D.
Download the following link and extract the three files, then open the DeepSkyStacker.exe file and use that version from now on. You should be able to use your RAW files now
http://deepskystacker.free.fr/downlo...r333beta45.rar
Cheers
Greg

[trek1701 (Mark)]

Thanks Greg

That made all the difference.
I thought I downloaded the lasted version of DSS a few months ago but it wasn't the Beta one.

Cheers Mark

PS. I always thought Beta was better than VHS

[loki78 (Jon)]

I had the same problem when trying to process the shots of the milky way i'd taken with my 600D. At 4 in the morning it was driving me insane, then finally found out the next day I needed the beta for the 600D also.