Carina Nebula Up Close
19-Apr-2019
One of the largest nebulae in the sky, the Carina Nebula is visible to the naked eye in the southern sky.
Contained in this close-up image are numerous objects annotated below; Open cluster Trumpler 14, the Keyhole Nebula, the Finger of God & Caterpillar globules, and the Mystic Mountain Nebula at the bottom edge of the image is the edge of Eta Carinae and its Homunculus Nebula.
This false colour photograph shows the interplay of three gasses: hydrogen-alpha in green, sulphur-2 in red, and oxygen-3 in blue.
Image:
- 67x 450s 6nm S-II
- 66x 450s 6nm H-α
- 87x 450s 6nm O-III
Total integration 27.5 hours.
Hardware:
- Celestron 11" EdgeHD
- Skywatcher EQ8 Pro mount
- QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik 6nm narrowband filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Starlight Xpress Active Optics
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
- Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II
Location:
- Imaged on 9 nights between 21st February and 31st March 2019.
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
Software:
- Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 10
- Captured with TheSkyX Professional
- Guiding with PHD2
- FocusLock live focusing
- PixInsight: Calibrate, align, stack, deconvolution, pixelmath SHO combination, histogram stretch, curves, reduction of magenta star halos.
- Photoshop CC: Saturation, high pass filter, annotations.