Eta Carina nebula

[Wiu-Wiu]

It has been a while since i posted something here. In may, i took a stargazing trip to Namibia with 2 friends, and i am still processing images, sketches and observations from it. I'll be spamming the forum again as the sketches get finalised. 

 

I'll kick off with one of the most eleaborate sketches i ever made up to date. It is a view of the center of the Eta Carina Nebula, with a nice view of the keyhole nebula. Details are in the image. 

If you ever have a chance to see it, this must be one of the most beautiful nebulae visible from Earth. you can keep looking at it for hours and never get tired of it.

 

[globular]

Stunning. 

[Kon]

Stunning sketch. It is one of the nebulas I would love to see in the future. @Epick Cromwrote a nice report on it last year and combined with your sketch it is magnificent.

[Ceramus]

Beautiful sketch. My favorite DSO.

[dobbyisbest]

Fantastic sketch. What a beauty! Please do keep us posted, I am very curious.
 

Having grown up in the Southern Hemisphere and now living up north, I regret not getting into astronomy earlier. Fortunately I have a trip planned to South Africa later this year and am very much going to hit 21.90+ mag sites for two weeks straight. I’ll only be able to see Eta Carinae late at night at about 15-20 degrees during that time of the year though, but at high altitude (c.1400m) hopefully it’ll be a decent view. At one point it should also be possible to compare it and M42 basically side by side. Also looking forward to LMC (specifically bought 7x50 binos for this), SMC and a few of the Milky Way core objects that we struggle with up here. Taking my 7x50s, 15x70s and a 4” reflector.

As you can see, I’m only doing visual observation, so again, I look forward to your sketches and images.

There is isn’t by chance a good SH book that you found helpful and would recommend? I find it criminal how scarcely documented objects like Carina and others down there are.

[Wiu-Wiu]

Eta Carina is much brighter and bigger than M42. You’ll see why the Northern hemisphere got dealt a bad hand there 😅

15-20 degrees might still be plenty high enough, we saw the LMC and SMC at about that high, and views were stunning already. 
 

what does SH stand for? I am not a native english speaker, and can’t imagine what you’re looking for. 

quite a bit of sketches are in my deepskylog gallery, and pictures on my website. 

[dobbyisbest]

Sorry, with SH I meant Southern Hemisphere. 
 

Ah and thanks, I’ve found your website now. I will have a good browse. 

 

[Wiu-Wiu]

Ah! How silly of me. Ofcourse! 
i usually go to my trusty IDSA (interstellarum deepsky atlas), it has brighter objects printed bolder, so the easy ones pop out on the page. 
 

being a list guy myself, browsing Deepskylog also helps, there are tons of observing lists in there and most targets have sketches and observations logged, so it’s good to know what you’re up against. 
 

the Caldwell list might be a good one for you! I wished i had known that one before we left, it’s full of nice targets.
 

let us know how your list is coming together, it might help for future reference