Eta Carina Nebula and the Southern Cross from Mauritius

[eshy76]

Hi everyone!

I was lucky enough to spend Easter in Mauritius and managed to get a night of imaging in despite the tropical night time clouds! As someone who lives in the Northern hemisphere, the Carina nebula has always been a target I've coveted, but during my holiday, I also loved Crux as prominent constellation in the Southern sky. So when I ran into polar alignment issues with my Skyguider Pro, I decided to play it safe and go for a wider field, capturing both those targets rather than focusing purely on Carina as was my original goal.

This was shot from my father in law's rooftop in Bonne Terre, Vacoas, Mauritius and my basic polar alignment meant significant field rotation, but I still got some usable data. Cropped, processed and finally upsampled.

Data was shot at f/2.8 with a 50mm lens, unguided on an unmodified Sony a6500. 174 lights at 30 secs each = 1.4 hours of integration. Bortle 5.

From the colours it looks like these objects sit right on the disc of the Milky Way and I know there is more in the picture I haven't mentioned!

Thanks for looking!