Homunculus - Eta Carinae, Bradley Michelbach

Homunculus - Eta Carinae

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging
Homunculus - Eta Carinae, Bradley Michelbach

Homunculus - Eta Carinae

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

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Description

Nearly 200 years ago, a great eruption occurred in the Eta Carinae system, ejecting out gasses over 10 times the mass of the Sun. Now, around one of the galaxy's most luminous stars we see a beautiful tiny bipolar nebula.

This is a particularly challenging object to photograph. Each lobe is only around 10 arcseconds wide and the blinding light equal to several million Suns shines from within. Like planetary, capturing this object is at the mercy of seeing. I needed several attempts over a few weeks to capture something reasonable and to experiment with various gain and exposure combinations for my optical system. I eventually settled for 100ms exposures with 200 gain.

I'm making this a yearly tradition, in hopes to generate a decade long timelapse, or longer! We will be able to see the gasses continue to expand over the next several years.

Also, I've finally decided to check out AstroBin - hey!

- Brad

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Homunculus - Eta Carinae, Bradley Michelbach