Terence Galuszka Astrophotography

My first astro-photo! The brightest of all nebulae visible in the night sky and a real gem for southern hemisphere astronomers, The Keyhole Nebula NGC 3372 reflects the UV light of the surrounding stars creating the wonderful reddish-pink nebulosity as seen in this image. The large orange coloured star bottom centre of the photo is Eta Carina. A super massive star that is nearing the end of its life and estimated to be 100 times larger than the sun and 16 Billion kilometers across! Astronomers now believe that it's supernova explosion may be so large that it will collapse in on itself, dragging its companion star along for the ride. The resulting black hole and gamma ray brust could potentially be so great that it will wipe out any planet or star in its beam.

Visual observation of Eta Carina and The Keyhole Nebulae NGC3372 is very easy.  The red circles to the right in the location chart below indicate its position.

The chart shows the The Keyhole Nebulae in relation to the Southern Cross "Crux" as seen during the winter months.

To find the keyhole nebula, find Hadar (second pointer) then make a line to Acrux. Project that same distance across and about 1 finger width with up and you should notice a bright fuzzy area in the night sky. This is the Keyhole Nebula.

I have only listed Eta Carina in the star table. m is the apparent visual magnitude and spectral type as indicated.

 Technical Details

 Date

26 April 2008

 Location

 Wellington New Zealand

 Optics

Celestron C11 OTA @ F10

 Mount

Celestron CGE

 Camera

Orion Deep Space colour Imager ii

 Filters

N/A

 Exposure

20 minutes unguided.

 Acquisition

Celestron Nexremote

 Processing

MaxIm DL EE. Picasa.