a very poor Eta Carinae Nebula NGC3372 with lessons learned

[troypiggo]

No clouds out tonight. Thought I'd give drift aligning a go, and to my surprise I got things pretty well aligned I think. PHD guiding wasn't working too hard keeping stars tracked as it was last time I had a chance to use it.

So pretty pleased with myself I thought I'd give shooting M42 again for this month's challenge, but the moon was too bright and too close, so decided I'd try shooting something elsewhere in the sky.

Lesson 1 learned, have backup targets in mind in different parts of the sky. I had no idea, so just searched around Cartes du Ciel (http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/) and noticed NGC3372 was a nebula pretty close to some brightish guide stars that I could use. I need brightish stars to guide because my current guide scope isn't the best and I have a wider field f/5 guide scope on the way. I needed to look up what NGC3372 was, and when I saw Eta Carinae Nebula I recalled having seen it before.

Pointed the scope goto there, off we slewed, and I had no idea if the nebula was in view or not. Don't know if it was the light pollution or not. Decided to trust my alignments and just shoot anyway. 5min exposures at ISO800. Planned to do 5 at 5 mins, and 3 to 5 at 10mins. Set up and start the exposures. Neighbour comes home late and we start chatting. I hear the shutter clicking and the chats continue.

Neighbour leaves. Change from 5 min to 10 min exposures. After 20mins I think... haven't heard the shutter go for a while. Check. Battery flat. I hadn't been shooting anything for like 45mins! Idiot.

So only ended up with 3x5min shots. :( So here it is. I know it's not the best and there's much more there to get. Next time. I'm tired and peeved, but lessons learned...

http://piggo.com/~troy/photos/2009/2009_02_06/500/eta_carina.jpg (http://piggo.com/~troy/photos/2009/2009_02_06/eta_carina.jpg)

[ebann]

You still owe us your gear shot! ;)

[chris.bailey]

Nowt wrong with that good sharp stars. Add a few more and it will be really nice.

[Nighthound]

Not bad at all Troy. Those lessons are building blocks for the success you're after. Frustration is just part of the process. Keep at it, you'll get 'em.

[troypiggo]

Thanks guys. I guess I'm very happy with the alignment and balance part of it all now, so do take that away from last night. Still peeved about not checking on things more regularly.

[chris.bailey]

Failed nights include -

Trying to guide on a hot pixel. Took hours to figure it out,
Not having the laptop plugged in so battery ran out after an hour (I was asleep indoors)
Taking 40 exposures at 4 seconds rather than 4 minutes
Having aligned on a star that definately was not Polaris.
Not plugging in the dew heaters and ending up with a very foggy M31.
Not tightening up the dec sufficiently.
Several missed targets altogether, great shots of open space.

All part of the fun...in hindsight :-)

[troypiggo]

Haha. Great, thanks. I needed to hear that. :)

Talking to another guy the other night. He said the first "astrofest" he went to, 100 odd astronomers there at a dark site he'd never been to before, and he was using a mount that he wasn't used to, set it all up pointing in the wrong direction and hadn't noticed til fully set up. 99 mounts all pointing one direction, he's the only one pointing the other way :)

[Nightop]

Per your request

http://www.nightop.com/snow/eta_carina_edit.jpg

[Adrena1in]

Well I'd say that image is a lovely Widefield there Troy. Looking forward to getting something similar, (I hope), when I pick up a 66mm or 70mm APO.

[grfics]

There is more in your photo if you dig for it:

HTTP://www.cuckoolele.com/photos/eta_carina.jpg

[troypiggo]

Thanks for the edits guys! I can see there is a little more there to gain. I'll have a play some more. :)

[dpastern]

Troy - what format did you shoot this in? TIFF? FITS? If FITS, I presume it's RGB and not separate channel images? I'm just curious that's all. I had a play with the image, first selecting each channel in Photoshop, saving them as grayscale, and then opening them in the GIMP and saving as FITS files. I then tried to stretch them using the Photoshop FITS liberator plugin, which works OK. But mapping the channels to RGB etc doesn't quite work as it should ;-) I guess I'm trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear (format wise, not your original image that is). There's an excellent tutorial here:

http://rdelsol.com/Presentations.html

Dave

[troypiggo]

G'day Dave. Shot in RAW, then used Deep Sky Stacker to stack them and saved as TIFF, then edited the TIFF in GIMP using curves and saved as JPG. I have no experience with FITS, only heard the term. I'll read up on it.

PS - You have mail. Wanna get together next weekend for an astro-session?

[dpastern]

Ah RAW, that's right you're using the DSLR (forgot). You should be able to shoot FITS with that Meade DSI ;-) I'm not sure what the other guys do on here, but from what I've seen, most of the serious/experienced guys seem to shoot FITS.

Got your mail, I'm new to get paid on Friday, I should be able to afford it. Not sure how I'll go staying up all night, @ my age I fall asleep by 2am lol. The venue sounds good, other than accomodation sounds non existant (pity). I'll reply to your mail a bit later.

Cheers,

Dave