The Southern Cross is in a rich star field. Swinging your binoculars to the west brings one of the most spectacular nebulae in the sky to view as a hazy white patch (NGC3372). Even a short digital camera exposure shows the cloudy patch is mostly red, due to glowing ionised hydrogen gas. (H2 region). In the midst of the brightest region is the unstable eta Carina star. From a dark sky site, this glowing gas is visible to the naked eye, but the red colour requires photography. You can easily find further H2 regions on this photograph. If the star inside the gas explodes, the already light area will be even brighter and visible to the naked eye, so this is the spot always checked on a dark night from New Zealand.
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Pointers, Coal sack, Southern Cross, eta Carina Nebula
from a dark sky site: Kohukohu, Northland, NewZealand.
Astrophotography by Alec Kennedy using his auto-guiding system.
Alec used an 8 minute exposure on an Olympus DSLR, ISO 400 and f3.5 - in order to show the red nebulae, but he feels this over-exposed the stars for the small magnification used here.
