I liked the wide field imaging of the Carina nebula so much that I just had to do a zoomed in, starless, SHO version using the big boy scope – and it has exceeded all of my hopes !
Centred on the Mystic Mountain region, this highlights the northern lobe of the nebula which contains most of the more famous parts of the Carina nebula including Homonculus Nebula, Keyhole Nebula, Defiant Finger, Mystic Mountain Dark Gobules, Bright Rimmed Globules, various dust pillars and star clusters.
As Eta Carina is so damn bright, the star removal process did leave artifacts, which can be seen if you look for – but I am still chuffed.
An uncrompressed .tif file (135 MB) is available here
Image Details :
64 x 300s for each of Ha, Oiii & Sii mapped as SHO and tweaked to the Gold and Turquoise.
100x 300s darks and 100 Bias frames for calibration
Equipment :
GSO RC10 on the Skywatcher EQ8 mount.
QHY268M cooled mono camera set at -10C and 2×2 binning with gain @ 56 and offset of 25.
Antlia 2″ 3nm Ha, Oiii and Sii filters mounted in the QHY-M Filter Wheel
Moonlite crayford focuser with Motor control
QHY5 guide camera in QHY OAG-M
PegasusAstro Ultimate PowerBox V2 for power distribution, USB hub and Dew Control
Pier mounted in the Nexdome and remotely run via a scope mounted NUC mini pc.
Processing software :
Mount interface with Green Swamp Server
Guiding by PHD2
Image Capture controlled by Sequence Generator Pro (SGPro)
Image Calibration, Registration, Stacking, Combination, Deconvolution and Star Removal by PixInsight
Image stretching and final processing in Photoshop
Remote Control via Remote Desktop.
