Lady Liberty

[Nikolas (Nik)]

NGC 3579 The statue of Liberty, Not visible to those who claim her as their own so they built statues to look at instead.

Total revision combining old and new data Over 14 hours of acquisition and I aim to obtain twice that in the next few weeks hopefully I used the new gradient correction tool in Pixinsight, the jury is still out but it does seems to keep more nebulosity than Graxpert.

Taken in bortle 6 skies over the last 3 years Optolong L-Extreme and L-Ultimate filters.

ASI 294mc Pro Camera

ASIAIR pro for acquisition guiding etc,

TS-OPTICS 130 APO reduced to 0.75 with Riccardi reducer on the Skywatcher neq6Pro mount

Stacked and preprocessed in Astropixel Processor extracted the HA and O3 as well as the RGB

Processed in Pixinsight used the Forax palette to extract the stars as this gives them a better colour. HA as a luminance layer and finalised in Photoshop.


Astrobin

[floyd_2 (Dean)]

Wow - 3 years in the making. This one has been an exercise in patience mate. Superb results. I love seeing images where the dark features are nice and clear, and well defined like in this one. Your colour palette bring out loads of detail too. Really nice image and excellent scale.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Thanks Dean

It's an ongoing project, as each season passes I add a further number of images so that the data builds up, the issue is the weather we have in Melbourne, it was gorgeous last night getting subs and guiding of 0.4 with the EQ6 then the clouds rolled in about 1am this would have brought it up to 17 hours but there is always the next week

[floyd_2 (Dean)]

I know what you mean about the weather Nik. Sydney is patchy at best as well. I pretty much put everything else aside if I get a clear night these days lol. I try to have everything planned well in advance so that I don’t waste a minute of clear skies

I’m currently considering investing in PI and found your comment about GraXpert interesting. I’ve found GraXpert fairly capable so am excited that there’s possibly an even better solution in PI.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Have a look on youtube about the new features of pixinsight, the gradient correction tool has a lot of potential to be a game changer

[Dave882 (David)]

Great shot Nick. The detail in the old lady is really stunning. And personally I think the foraxx pallet really suits her too!!

I'm really interested to try out this new gradient tool as well. Currently I use the APP LP tool which I've found to be excellent , so I'd be try to see a comparison between the 2.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Originally Posted by Dave882

Great shot Nick. The detail in the old lady is really stunning. And personally I think the foraxx pallet really suits her too!!

I'm really interested to try out this new gradient tool as well. Currently I use the APP LP tool which I've found to be excellent , so I'd be try to see a comparison between the 2.

Hi Dave
I actually used the LP tool first I forgot to add that because I still think it removes most of the gradient, this means less faffing around with the settings in the gradient correction. Combining this method seems to have really helped with complex gradients.
Foraxx pallet, especially with the Sulfur component added renders beautiful stars

[SamTurner (Sam)]

Wow 14 hours is pretty hardcore. Good on you. Love the colour range you have going on here. I agree I am now a convert to the PI gradient tool.

[AlexN]

Awesome resolution! the detail in this is incredible!

Love your work!

[Leo.G (Leo)]

That's an incredible result. The image is stunning.

[Startrek (Martin)]

Nik,
Wow such a long term project, kudos for perseverance
Lovely image mate
Perfectly framing and FOV for this object
Colours are excellent and I particularly like the dark regions of dust in the outer areas
There’s days where I wish I had wider field scope to capture all that outer detail
When eventually I hang up my Newts in the future I’m definitely getting a 120 or 130 APO , such a versatile focal length
Well done !!!

Martin

[Craig_]

Very nice result!