I am sure I can get a little more out of this one. I think I have gone rusty in my processing over the last few months of not imaging....

19 minutes with darks and flats.
Nexstar 11 GPS - Focal reducer to F6.3
Unmodded Canon 400D
Manual guide using Toucam on piggybacked ED80 on screen.
Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in paintshop pro 9.

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A.S.I.G.N. Observatory
Canberra A.C.T.
www.asignobservatory.com

Wow. I don't know anything science related to say, but that is just beautiful. What a wonderful universe we live in.

Awesome shot deep inside the Eta Carinae Nebula! Is it true that Eta Carinae itself is naked-eye visible again?

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You can't really tell the difference between drunken rambling and sober blogging.

Good colour in the central region. I think this is the most beautiful nebula in the Southern Hemisphere. Thanks for sharing.

Kind regards
Matt

Thanks guys, it was only the first practice image. I only had a short time with the hole in the clouds and i need to find a better way to make flats. THe tshirt over the aperture lit with a desk lamp just didnt quite do it. I might try sky flats next time. Or a light box.

The rotating effect you can see, I think is caused by the focal reducer. The image is already cropped. You should have seen the gunk around it. Someone has suggested that I try moving the camera body closer or further away from the reducer to see if it flattens at all.

I processed RAW images when I found that the JPG ones are a waste of time. Once I had finished processing I saved as a JPG to post about.

I would like to do a good hour of stacking for this one at least next time.

I would be out there now except its cloudy again. Its now five to one in the morning and I have been checking on the sky all night.

If its so hard to even CAPTURE A GOOD IMAGE OF IT.........imagine how hard it was to build it in the first place.....now there's something to ponder.

Baz.

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A.S.I.G.N. Observatory
Canberra A.C.T.
www.asignobservatory.com

My best flat result is using T shirt flats. For the "T shirt" I use three cloth layers, two white sheet material the middle black muslin. This causes a 20 second exposure when pointed at blue sky. Set it up as you would for the photo, dew shield etc. Point it to blue sky but where the sun can't hit the cloth, even the edges wrapped around the tube. I use the dew shield to cover this. Any direct light on the material anyplace will ruin the flat. I use about 20 exposures. Expose for about 1/3 full exposure. My camera saturates about 60K so I expose for 20k maximum. Since the exposure time is 20 seconds or longer (Ha is 5 minutes!) I also take the same number of darks at the same temp and combine those and subtract them from the image. Hot and cold pixels are removed. I take the flats at 1 to 1 binning even though most of my imaging is at 2x2 or 3x3. I just reduce the 1x1 flat after it is processed to make the 2x2 and 3x3 sizes.

I see better results than I do with sky flats. Also, since I need them for 5 filters there's not enough time between when it is dark enough to take the first flat and when stars become a real problem to get even half the needed flats unless I use very few for each filter. I need three nights to get sky flats while I can get T shirt ones most any time, even a cloudy day works if the variation in light isn't great. I've tried light boxes and many other things. This works best for me. How any of this applies to DSLR work I don't know having never used one.

Rick

It is simply a beautiful shot of this southern beaut! The colors is tops nice blend and rich. looking forward to see the final outcome. You did great baz and Clear Skies