The Carina Nebula

The Carina nebula, combined Hα and RGB images

Image copyright: TCS*Astrophotography

This narrowband image of the emission nebula around Eta Carina was kindly submitted by Cory Schmitz and Tanja Sund, as a collaboration under their TCS*Astrophotography brand.  It was recorded in Johannesburg on the evening of Valentine’s day, and is astonishingly detailed.

The photographers can be reached on twitter as @TheAstroShake and @AstroTanja

17x 10 minute exposures
170 minutes total integration time
Calibrated / reduced with bias, dark, and flat frames
Officina Stellare Hiper APO 105
QSI683ws8 CCD
Ha filter
Officina Stellare 0.75 focal reducer/field flattener
Celestron CGEM DX mount
50mm finder/guider
Orion SSAG
Johannesburg, South Africa, on 2014-02-12

Acquisition and focusing with Sequence Generator Lite
Reduction, integration and post-processing with PixInsight