I've been sitting on this for awhile and it's not getting any better with age. Despite plenty of data I found this Witch's Head quite difficult to process but I am happy with this version.
A good deal of gradient extraction required in PixInsight but still very hard to process the colour overall. This image naturally wanted to be a lot more red/magenta and never as blue as most images of this object I've seen.
Equipment details on SmugMug with the image. There's also a portrait version in the album with North up which will suit a mobile device better than your desktop monitor (which you can't rotate so easily)
When I first started capturing this image my dome automation was in its early stages but by January it was fully automated. There have been a lot of issues so there's probably another 40 hours of data that's been discarded along the way. And then it was out of action for all of the great weather in February.. because I tried to tinker with something to improve it and then had to wait a fortnight for replacement part.. oops.
Time to think about the next target.. the dome is still capturing a few Witch's Head subs because I haven't had time to program in suitable other targets!
Certainly looks good to me! You are right, not the most Mobile friendly hehe
Nicely captured though
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
That's a great witch. Looking good there.
Greg.
Thanks Colin & Greg
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
One of the best renditions I've seen of this nebula.
40 hours...I wish....the weather is clearly better south of the border!
Nice one
Thanks Peter.
Would be hard to deny that we have been having a better run of weather. Would have actually traded a few clear skies for a little more rain over the last few months (especially while the dome was out of action!) but we've had 27mm today and winter has arrived. We'll see how the patterns go from here..
Nice job Phil! Plenty of data there for sure (!) and very nice colour. Alas, the composition falls a little short for me. I have this frustrating urge to pan slightly down and to the left!
Nice job Phil! Plenty of data there for sure (!) and very nice colour. Alas, the composition falls a little short for me. I have this frustrating urge to pan slightly down and to the left!
Interesting you say that Marcus. Are you referring to the portrait version? There is more image frame to the left but I had to crop it out due to poor image quality.. partly a result of framing not being consistent during acquisition.. one of the automation bugs that is a bit better now.
I don't really like the landscape composition but it is nice on a desktop monitor to be able to fill the screen. Aside from that I prefer the portrait version with north up (most versions have south up). Thanks for the comments
Well done Phil! Very nice image - great detail.
Great to see you are ironing out the automation side of things.
Good luck with it all.
So many things can go wrong!
Cheers,
Tim
Well done Phil! Very nice image - great detail.
Great to see you are ironing out the automation side of things.
Good luck with it all.
So many things can go wrong!
Cheers,
Tim
Thanks Tim. Don't scare me with your stories
Early days for me but automation is fun in its own way and it's not hard to see why people do it - and a good way to impress friends and colleagues too . As I roll out of bed for work in the morning all I do is check that the dome is closed and parked in it's normal position.. often go several days before finding out how much clear sky there has been and how much data has been collected.
Nice image Phil. Doing 40 hours was a good move. When I imaged this same part in almost the same composition I wish I had collected a lot more. At the time I had not started doing remote automation and I remember thinking that automation would have helped. It's always better to collect more than you need in my opinion and in this case you have been able to select the best data. I really like your colours and the vibrancy, by comparison my version looks drab. The dark nebulosity shows up with the greater integration too.
