NGC 3372 - Eta Carina Nebula and Keyhole.  Drawings by Carl Knight

Carl's Observation Notes:

"Last night was a hard frost here (New Zealand) and clear skies. Naked eye LMag was around 6.5 based on stars I could see in the coal sack.
I could see the Homunculus around Eta Car itself, but it's structure is too fine to draw. I changed to high power for a better look at it just before 
coming inside - you could see the filamentary structure even - so I'm going to concentrate just on this when another occasion presents. 

I was a little disappointed with the sketch at first. I was not sure that I had captured the stunning beauty - the star field is fantastic - however my 
opinion of the sketch increased somewhat when I inverted the colours. It is very close to what I saw through the eyepiece. The original drawing is large 
format, full A4 width give or take.

So for now the attached image details are as follows":

Object:		NGC 3372 - Eta Carina Nebula and Keyhole.
Telescope: 	12" F10 SCT.
Eyepiece:	22mm Televue Panoptic.
Magnification:	139x
FOV.		29.5'
Filter:		None.
UTC:		21/05/2009 11:45 UTC (23:45 NZST)
NE LMag:	>6.5

Click on individual sketches for more detail.