Eta Carina - NGC 3372

JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
A big thanks to Mike for finding me this source of some free Astro Data I could process since I have ran out of my own Astro Data. This is from a place called GoldField Astronomical Observatory. Home (goldfieldastro.space)

This is an Astro object that is only in the Southern Hemisphere, so I could never capture it on my own anyway. It was interesting to work on processing this data, it came from Goldfield already stacked, which is fine since the program I use for stacking only stacks and nothing else anyway and outputs a tiff file just like Goldfield lets you download. So I took their tiff into Photoshop and processed it by stretching it, etc, just like I would do with my own tiff from my own stacked images.

But with that said, I will say that since I didn't actually capture this, there is a bit of an emotional disconnect with the final image compared to the proud papa feeling I have when I have spent all night capturing an image and then took my raw images and stacked them and then massaged them to get a final output. So this was fun, but just a little bit of empty fun if you will.

From their website:

Object Type: Nebula
Object: Eta Carina, NGC 3372
Type: Sample
Telescope: Takahashi Mewlon250CRS
Camera: ZWO ASI094
Mount: ASA DDM60
Image Size: 7376 x 4928
Resolution: 0.4 arcsec/pixel
Field of View: 0.82º x 0.55º
Total Exposure: 0.67 Hours
RGB: 8x300s

The Carina Nebula, NGC 3372 is a large, complex area of bright and dark nebulosity in the constellation Carina, and is located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm. The nebula lies at an estimated distance of approximately 8,500 light-years (2,600 pc) from Earth.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

NGC 3372_dw.jpg
 
AlanLichty

AlanLichty

Moderator
I was getting ready to say how astounded I over what you captured with your DSLR until I read your description. Still some very nice processing and a beautiful result.
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
JIm,

Very cool! This is probably THE object to try to capture in the southern sky (or perhaps equal to capturing the 2 dwarf galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds) and is a stupendous object. As Jim says, it is very bright, as evidenced by the fact that according to the posted info this is only 48 minutes of exposure using a telescope with a native F number of something like F/10 ( or maybe f/7.3 if a reducer was used...) So this is brighter that the Orion Nebula, and FOUR times larger in area as well.

Very fun to see this, and the processing looks great. As you say Jim, not quite the same emotional attachment or feeling of accomplishment from someone else's data though, but still a cool result indeed. I have resisted doing this for the same reason, and because I still have an idea to someday get down to that area and take some of my own data, even though it would be on a very minimal setup I'm sure.

I will keep looking for other data sets in case you are anxious for more, and look forward to your processing results with them.

ML
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
AlanLichty said:
I was getting ready to say how astounded I over what you captured with your DSLR until I read your description. Still some very nice processing and a beautiful result.
Click to expand...
Hey Alan, thanks so much.

In regards to a DSLR, they captured this image on a Color Astro camera with no filters. The sensor in this camera comes from the Sony 36mm full frame. So actually I could get a very similar result was I able to go down there and photograph it.
 
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