Ngc6559

[Paul Haese]

This is an image of NGC6559 which is located in Sagittarius at a distance of around 5000 light years.

The area contains quite a few types of nebula with emission, reflection and dark nebula being present. It is quite a pretty area.

The image contains 16.25 hours of data with the following make up:

570 minutes of luminance.
90 minutes of Ha
90 minutes of red
105 minutes of blue
120 minutes of green

Image was taken with GSO RC, STXL11002 with AOX and PME.

I have been wanting to take an image at a tighter image scale for some time. What I found is that guide stars for the AOX are not plentiful so the composition is not really to my liking. I will probably try imaging this object with the Newtonian once I have that up and running as I am sure I will have brighter guide stars to choose from.

Click here for larger resolution image.

Edit. I have reprocessed the data set. I was not happy with the blues.

Edit again: Added the tighter crop discussed below.

[el_draco (Rom)]

That's a really nice image Paul. The colours are stunning.

[Retrograde (Pete)]

I think I see what you mean about the composition. Presumably you'd like the nebulosity more centred? Still a beautiful, deep & nuanced take on this object. Very nice!

[gregbradley]

Yes a very nice image and the composition as you say is not ideal. Are you able to not use the AOX in these situations or doesn't it work that way?

Lovely colours and that area at the bottom left is the best part of the image. Lots of detail there.

Greg.

[RickS (Rick)]

Colour and detail all look good, Paul. I'd be interested to see a small crop at full res.

[Stevec35 (Steve)]

Nice vibrant detailed shot Paul. I can see some registration problems with the red in the larger version though. I see what you mean by the composition.

Cheers

Steve

[Paul Haese]

Thanks guys, I have looked at the image again. I was not happy with the greater concentration of blues in the former image, so have adjusted both the registration and the colour balance.

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Yes a very nice image and the composition as you say is not ideal. Are you able to not use the AOX in these situations or doesn't it work that way?

Lovely colours and that area at the bottom left is the best part of the image. Lots of detail there.

Greg.

Thanks Greg. The AOX really needs reasonably bright stars to be useful as guide stars. You can use less bright stars but in Maxim those stars create guide star fade problems at present. This means that in automation the camera will struggle to find a guide star after it has moved to go and focus and then returns to the target. Usually it will find the guide star on the next image taken. This can mean that I would lose quite a few subs during a night of imaging if the temperature changes a lot and therefore requiring more focus runs. There is work being done on the software to eliminate this problem and I am just waiting for that work to be completed to use stars around mag 7-9 again. For now I am forced to use bright stars around mag 5 and that can lead to composition problems.

Alternatively I could use traditional guiding but that means the AOX is not in operation.

Originally Posted by RickS

Colour and detail all look good, Paul. I'd be interested to see a small crop at full res.

Thanks Rick. Which part are you interested in Rick. NGC6559 itself?

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

Which part are you interested in Rick. NGC6559 itself?

That would be great, thanks Paul.

[Paul Haese]

Originally Posted by RickS

That would be great, thanks Paul.

Here you go Rick. Warts and all.

[atalas]

If the dusty regions popped the composition would of worked I recon Paul....take you into the Fibonacci's ....still very good work though

[DJT (David)]

Nice work Paul. That crop at full res is really cool by the way!

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

Here you go Rick. Warts and all.

Thanks, Paul

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Lovely image Paul. While looking at different parts of your image I felt like a kid in a candy shop - really really like it

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

It certainly makes for pleasant pixel peeping.

[Martin Pugh]

Really, really nice Paul.

Great detail and colour balance.

cheers
Martin

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Very fine. You've captured the reflection nebulosity beautifully.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Yeah, shame about the framing but the colours are spot on. Detail great too.

Why not just crop the frame to centre what you do have?

[Andy01 (Andy)]

+1 Marcus, crop out the right hand side and it looks well balanced.
I'm really enjoying seeing detail in areas that I havn't seen detail before - nicely done!

[Paul Haese]

Thanks guys for the comments. I appreciate the time you have taken to write something.

Originally Posted by atalas

If the dusty regions popped the composition would of worked I recon Paul....take you into the Fibonacci's ....still very good work though

Thanks Loui, on your advice I brightened that side of the image to see if that pops. I think it is a little better and yes I see what you mean about a Fibonacci sequence here. Had not even occurred to me until you mention it. If I had more of the dark nebula curve it would make more sense.

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Yeah, shame about the framing but the colours are spot on. Detail great too.

Why not just crop the frame to centre what you do have?

Thanks Marcus, I had already done some cropping as an experiment but the image starts getting small. The left side of the image now is very close to the left margin of the image. Perhaps I could rotate the image around clockwise after a crop. Though I sort of do like the dark nebula and the golden stars on the right, but the balance does not seem right to me either. Guide stars are a pain.

[Paul Haese]

I have decided that Marcus and Andy were correct. I have cropped the image to a square now and that seems to work better I think.

Click here for the larger resolution image.

BTW Rick, can I ask why you wanted to see a full res crop?