Fernando Schuindt
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My first picture at the SSO (NGC 3372)

This post was originally published on my old blog dedicated to amateur astronomy.

As I’m studying a lot about AP, I thought would be nice to give a try to iTelescope.net systems, and it was pretty fun. I picked the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia and the T8 telescope, which is a 106mm Takahashi FSQ Apochromatic, 0.10-m f/5 telescope. The target was NGC 3372, the Eta Carinae Nebula.

This is a quite special DSO to me, as it’s the first object that I got in love with and started my fascination for deep sky in general. It all started with a video by my favorite YouTube channel: Sixty Symbols. The video was this one here, with the professor Mike Merrifield.

I never had access to such equipment before, so I got really exited with the filter selection and ordered a 32” exposure for each filter available. I just wanted to see it, haha. So I ended up with some frames that I had no use for.

I used:

  • 1x 32” Luminous frame
  • 1x 32” Red filter frame
  • 1x 32” Green filter frame
  • 1x 32” Blue filter frame
  • 1x 32” Hydrogen Alpha filter frame

Just one short frame for each filter I wanted to use, because that’s a budget project, hahaha.

When the frames arrived I thought I had messed up with something, they looked really dark. But after merging the Red and Ha frames, then the other channels (Green and Blue) and composing the HaRGB image with some stretching in Adobe Photoshop, it looked really nice for my newbie taste. As the CCD on the camera is Black&White, the colors were composed by using R, G and B filters. In this case the Red channel is merged with the Hydrogen Alpha channel, to reveal Hydrogen based structures with more detail.

To give an idea, this is how one of the frames looks like without any processing (the Red frame, smaller size tho):

Red Channel

But after the processing, that’s the result:

Author: Fernando Schuindt
License: CC BY 4.0
Camera: CCD FLI Microline 16803
Lens/Telescope: 106mm Takahashi FSQ Apochromatic, 0.10-m f/5
Composition: 1x Luminous Frame 32”, 1x Red Frame 32”, 1x Green Frame 32”, 1x Blue Frame 32”, 1x Ha Frame 32”
Processing: AvisFV 2.0 format conversion, Photoshop Channels composition, Levels adjustments and Camera Raw Filter
Location Name: Siding Spring Observatory (iTelescope), New South Wales - Australia;
Location Aprox. Coordinates: 31° 16’ 14.52’’ S 149° 3’ 31.32’’ E
Timestamp: 01-04-2020 17:49:24 UTC;
Theme: NGC 3372 (Eta Carinae nebulae)
RA: 10 45 06.00
DEC: -59 52 00.0
Other Gear: https://support.itelescope.net/support/solutions/articles/231911-telescope-8
Full Resolution Images: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ULajFc5dyPzvZKqk9
HaRGB Picture Information: https://gist.github.com/fschuindt/996ef63e6cda908f390f8d7c8407b17e
RGB Picture Information: https://gist.github.com/fschuindt/e66a200e3f1e766b46b2f2f4ac66d1bf

Picture HaRGB

I’ve also produced another image without the Ha filter:

Picture RGB

Fun fact is that the NGC 3532 (Wishing Well Cluster) is right there in the bottom right corner, I loved it. So I’m already waiting for my new schedule to happen, I won’t reveal it yet, but I’m hopping to see two galaxies in the next picture.

Again a special thanks to Terry F. for his teachings.