IC 1274 BigToe in Rhaspberry (HOO) and Hubble (SHO) palettes
We think this is gorgeous in HOO palette: IC 1274, or BigToe in H-alpha (mapped to red) and OIII (mapped to cyan). As before, a mosaic with about 80% panel overlap because our FOV isn't quite big enough for the whole thing.
To 7 hours of H-alpha We've added 10 hours of OIII. Stars are mapped to white.
Thanks to Rick Stevenson for pointing out the little planetary nebula at 6 o'clock. Entering the coordinates into Simbad, we find it is M1-41. The DSS image they show is a close match in morphology: the weird shape of the PN seems real.
Aspen CG16M with 3nM Astrodon filters on 20 inch PlaneWave. North up, field approximately 0.5 degrees wide, original image 0.55 sec arc/pixel. Moon 0-3 days.
Update:
We've now added a further 9 hrs of SII, and remapped to Hubble SHO. It was difficult to make it look "pretty" because the SII is relatively faint except where it is co-located with H-alpha. Thus the SII needs a lot of stretching, the stars get haloes, and the background gets gritty. But we think we've done a fair job of showing the SII given the difficulty.
We've tried hard to avoid the mortal sin of stretching the OIII and SII to make a pretty picture, and leaving the background a beautiful blue or purple when in fact there is nothing actually up there.
What we see: The SII shows fine shock front detail in the very bright areas, and in the planetary nebula. There also seem to be genuine diffuse clouds of SII far from the action, presumably stuff left over from long disrupted supernova explosions. Just guessing here.
Thanks David! Tonight we're adding SII, so we'll end up with an SHO version, but I'm not sure that the SII is especially real. It is faint and seems exactly co-located with the H-alpha. Perhaps the tiniest bit of the blindingly bright H-alpha leaks through the SII filter.
Now you're cookin' with gas - that's lovely, really pretty too
Now put the Palmolive away in the cupboard before you get tempted to bring it out again
Thanks Andy! Now where's the Palmolive? Ah! My fingers are soaking in it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by multiweb
Looks yummy. Very deep colors. Top shelf.
Cheers, Marc!
Quote:
Originally Posted by cometcatcher
I love this region. So much to play with. Especially that swordfish thing down the bottom. Nice palette. I wonder what the SHO version will look like.
Hi, Kevin! Processing the SII as we speak. When I first saw the swordfish thing in low res, in "The Night Sky Observer's Guide", I thought it was a giant fluffy quill pen. But now we know it is really an empty prawn shell.
We've now added a further 9 hrs of SII, and remapped to Hubble SHO. It was difficult to make it look "pretty" because the SII is relatively faint except where it is co-located with H-alpha. The SII needs a lot of stretching, the stars get haloes, and the background gets gritty. But we think we've done a fair job of showing the SII given the difficulty.
The result looks broadly similar to Martin Pugh's image of the same area, excepting our field of view is much smaller and the resolution correspondingly higher.
We've tried hard to avoid the mortal sin of stretching the OIII and SII to make a pretty picture, and leaving the background a beautiful blue or purple when in fact there is nothing actually up there.
What we see: The SII shows fine shock front detail in the very bright areas, and in the planetary nebula. There also seem to be genuine diffuse clouds of SII far from the action, presumably stuff left over from long disrupted supernova explosions. Just guessing here.
A fantastically detailed colour smorgasbord guys! Only minor gripe is that the bright stars are a bit blown out. Don't know if there is anything you could do about that.
Another fantastic image M&T. Colours work well together and there is a lot of interesting structures for the eyes to feast on. Well done
Thanks Suavi. The little planetary was a most unexpected addition.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevec35
A fantastically detailed colour smorgasbord guys! Only minor gripe is that the bright stars are a bit blown out. Don't know if there is anything you could do about that.
Cheers
Steve
Thanks Steve. I think that there is something systematically wrong with our processing that does that. Will give it much thought.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoff45
I really like the intricate detail, but can't really warm to the lime colour of ngc 6559. Gold would look better I think.
Geoff
Ta, Geoff. Would love to chat with you one day about what degrees of freedom we have there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmos
A lovely contrasty view with nuances of detail
Thanks Colin!
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
You've got some interesting detail there. That 20 inch really picks up the details.
Greg.
Cheers, Greg. It does seem to be ok at faint detail that might be too gritty with a smaller machine.
Can't decide which one I like better - both are great for different reasons. The scale shows details I never realised before. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks muchly Troy. Starting to think that it's worth producing multiple versions of some images - sometimes one to show faint nebular detail in context, and another to show the bright structure, or same idea with an open cluster, one to show the brightest stars like jewels on velvet, another to show it embedded in the milky way. And with narrowband, especially when there's only traces of SII, to produce two versions.
