Needle's Eye (NGC 247)

Benjamin (Ben) · #1 30-09-2019, 11:08 PM

Finally got out to a 'dark' site, which turned out to be party central! Managed to find my own small corner of Moogerah dam with a view, battled some low cloud and bush fire smoke but ended up with a short LRGB image. 80X60s LUM and 45X60s through each RGB filter. LRGB processing I'm not so familiar with so has been an adventure to find something that looks okay. Still very noisy but figure it is what it is. https://www.astrobin.com/ostl58/

Ken · #2 01-10-2019, 04:47 PM

That looks great, I started imaging this the other night. I did not realize how blue it is, must be a lot of new star regions I will add some extra imaging time with the blue filter. All those background Galaxies also add a sense of depth to the image.
Clear skies Ken.

Benjamin (Ben) · #3 01-10-2019, 11:22 PM

I've saturated the blues quite a bit in post processing (was a blue cast that was removed early on which might have impacted things). Reporcessed to try to minimise noise and up the central sharpness.
https://www.astrobin.com/full/ostl58/B/

Placidus (Mike and Trish) · #4 02-10-2019, 06:04 AM

Very pretty. The main galaxy came out well.

There are lots of far-distant galaxies in the background which you have captured very well indeed but they've burned out in processing so they're all-or-none. Should be easy to reprocess a tiny bit more gently and show more detail in them.

Benjamin (Ben) · #5 02-10-2019, 06:16 AM

Ah yes! Should be easy enough to mask them out of the processing loop at a certain stage. Got a bit obsessed with the big one. Many thanks for picking that up :-)

gregbradley · #6 02-10-2019, 06:33 AM

An excellent galaxy image Ben.

Greg.

Benjamin (Ben) · #7 02-10-2019, 06:51 AM

Cheers Greg. LRGB scares me somewhat with colour and bringing out detail: what is natural, overdone etc. Narrowband clarity and freedoms I’m a little more confident with. I tried to keep colour similar to an APOD version from March 2018.

Benjamin (Ben) · #8 02-10-2019, 04:57 PM

Okay, here is a final version (updated with selective deconvolution and noise reduction), with less burnt out galaxies in the background, although I'm not getting a lot of detail out of them.
https://www.astrobin.com/full/ostl58/R/