Located approximately 8500 light years in Carina resides a spectacularly violent HII region. Nestled in that is second largest star in our galaxy which is destined for a short but furious life.
Actually a double star in an accelerating collapse cycle which, should it go super dooper nova, would be visible in daytime. When the dust settles this region would be be gone. The Carina Nebula is always a visual treat through a big wide field 31 Nagler eyepiece on any instrument and like M17 (The Swan / Omega nebula) can absorb many hours of observation time through a range of filters and apertures. The Homunculus Nebula is truly mind boggling on a good night with a small 3-6mm Nagler Zoom eyepiece on good 20". One night many years ago we were observing it on a 20" at Crago Observatory on Bowen Mountain outside Sydney when a layer of smooth low cloud moved in covering the sky but the 20 was still on the Homunculus at high power. What happened next was other worldly. Rather than extinguishing the object, the view went from very good to sensational as the cloud improved the seeing and also acted as a filter that dramatically improved the dynamic range and the lobes really sprang out.

Of all the objects I have viewed in the Southern Sky, nothing comes close to demonstrating clearly that the dynamic range of the human eye is better than most sensors. The mottled lobs and jets are very distinct, whereas sensors drown them out. Finding a good image of the Homunculus is, or was, not easy. Hubble did a good job. Maybe a web cam on a big dob. Strange that few give it a red hot go on larger instruments. The entire nebula would have looked very different before the Great Eruption in the 1840s surrounded Eta Carinae with dust, drastically reducing the amount of ultraviolet light it put into the nebula. Over the last 20 years Eta Carina has brightened significantly as dust from the 1840's eruption clears and it is now easily visible to the naked eye. 

This approximately one degree field of view with the 127is with 300s seconds exposures, compared to my recent 180 second exposures,  and the earlier image taken with the Red Cat 71's 4 degree FOV  provide a range of experience on the same complex object.

A couple of clear nights and a blazing moon pushed me to just keep going on this one and I kept 7.8 hours from the 11 hours of images taken. 

This may not be end of it as have just completed a run of very short exposures at 2, 5 and 10 seconds.  I was hoping to extract detail on the homunculus but nothing significant appeared. However the HDR of 2,5,10  and 300 second exposures show promises in other areas and that is a work in progress.

The Homunculus is extremely challenging. Easier with a good eye  piece and a light bucket. It IS an that object needs a lot of aperture. 

New Pixinsight tools and scripts just keep coming and the endless parameters forks in the workflow road  have become vastly more manageable with things like the Image Blend script from SetiAstro et.al. 

As luck would have it I finally worked out an painful auto focus issue . I Removed the HSM, checked the feather touch focuser rack on the Televue and it was buttery smooth and was not being impeded. Turned out I had over tightened the bolt that clamps the HSM to the focuser. Doh! I reassembled and increased auto focus exposure time significantly.  Now perfect V Curves and it just works again. Yay! I can let it run into the wee hours again and with winter finally delivering the goods this should get interesting.