Two nebulae in Carina

[AusGuy]

The night of the 18^th January was as near perfect as you could want. It was only marred by having to wait until 10 o'clock for the Moon to set completely. But both clouds and dew were completely absent and the sky glow from my nearby city was quite subdued. A rare occurrence indeed. There are a couple of fairly easy diffuse nebulae visually quite close together in Carina and they made a good target for honing EAA skills with the new camera and software. NGC 3576 on the right of the image goes by the popular name of the Statue of Liberty Nebula and with a bit of faith you can just about see why. It is located at about 9,000 light years distant in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way (the next one in from us). By contrast the seemingly insignificant NGC 3603 to its left is 20,000 light years away and, according to Wikipedia, "is the most massive visible cloud of glowing gas and plasma, known as a HII region, in the Milky Way”. The bright central cluster (barely resolved here) contains three of the most massive and most luminous stars known.

Vixen R200SS; SkyWatcher AZ-EQ6 Pro; ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled to -10C; Baader MPCC.

SharpCap livestack 30 x 15 seconds at 420 gain; cropped and minor processing in Photoshop.