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Rolf Olsen | all galleries >> Astrophotography >> Nebulae > Homunculus Nebula with ejecta
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01/03/2011

Homunculus Nebula with ejecta

I always wanted to capture the faint ejecta around Eta Carinae and the Humunculus Nebula, since I didn't get it in my previous effort back in 2010 (see http://www.pbase.com/rolfolsen/image/123574588/original), and thought this must be a good challenge for the ToUCam.
The difficulty in capturing this part of the nebula lies in overwhelming glare from Eta itself which drowns out the ejecta since it is so close to the star.

This time I tried taking longer subs with the 5x Powermate (@ f/25) but the results were just too blurry at that focal length and long exposure times. I then resorted to prime focus (wish I had a 2x Powermate...) and got a decent view of the ejecta which is visible all around the Homunculus in the image.
There is a noticable colour difference between the Homunculus and the ejecta, with the ejecta having a much redder hue.

I blended my previous Homunculus image taken af f/25 over the new one of the ejecta to get a complete view of the fascinating structures in the area, hence the obvious difference in resolution. In the background are faint traces of the much larger Keyhole Nebula, especially to the upper right.


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Rolf Olsen10-Mar-2011 10:38
Thank you very much for your kind comment H :)
Humayun Qureshi08-Mar-2011 08:07
Mindblowingly superb, my friend. :)

Regards,
H
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