NGC 3372 The Eta Carina Nebula
This is one of the first nebula images that I was really pleased with. Matter of
fact it was my first nebula image. It's a picture of the Eta Carina Nebula (NGC
3372). This nebula contains the three brightest stars in our whole galaxy.
Each one is at least a million times brighter than our sun. One of these I think is
the wierd star Eta Carina that keeps blowing up at regular intervals without actually
destroying itself in a supernova. The nebula is in one of the brightest patches of
the Milky Way but being located at a declination of -59 degrees not many folks in the
northern hemisphere will get a look at it. It's visible to the naked eye and seen as
a 1 degree bright area in the Milky Way. It's impressive in binoculars and
small scopes. It occupies about four times the apparent area of the Orion nebula.
I made this image before I went and bought a cheap motor for my rickety old Tasco
mount. For this picture I used a home made Barn
Door tracker and fitted the Mintron 13V1C B&W camera to a Pentax K-Mount SLR
telephoto 28-200mm lens f/3.8-f15. I had to acquire a special adapter from Steven
Mogg (and I discovered he lives in the next suburb across from me). Nice guy,
Steven. It's a small universe. With the Mogg adapter I was able to fit my film
camera's zoom lens onto the Mintron video camera and using Astronomik RGB filters I was
then able to do three things:
a) The camera's S-Video output was fed into my Panasonic Mini-DV camcorder so I could
process the data on the computer later. The camcorder's firewire capability comes in
real handy.
b) While the data is being recorded I can watch what's happening via the BNC video
output which is connected to the TV for the live show.
c) By using a felt pen to draw a circle around a guide star on the TV screen I'm able
to adjust the rate that I rotate the Barn Door tracker and Hey Presto! A hand-guided barn
door tracker! what will I think of next?
More Eta Carina Images
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