SMC in 3nm NII

[avandonk]

This is five hours ie 19x16 minutes in 3nm NII. It is actually the best of 24 frames. Thin cloud affected the five that were rejected.

The data was collected with the SMC high or around the zenith.

Large image x1.5 native pixel size. 14MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2013_07/SMC_NII_5H.jpg


I am in uncharted territory here. What is signal? What is noise?

Here is the fit stack of 19 upsized frames 24 MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2013_07/SMC_NII_5H.zip



I would be very interested what others can do with this data.

Hopefully I can get OIII and SII to make a NB in Hubble palette.


Bert

[PeterM]

Bert, that looks so very good! Can't wait to see it on my 27inch monitor when I get home.

[multiweb]

That's deep alright Bert. Very cool. :thumbsup:

[cfranks]

Hi Bert,

I did a very basic stretch, Multiscale Transform + Denoise with PixInsight but there are a lot of 'gaps' left in the image. It looks reasonable (to me) but it suggests you need a lot more exposure? I don't know how to get the image to you. :shrug: The jpeg is over 3MB.

Charles

[prokyon]

Awesome, never seen it in NII!

[avandonk]

Charles the days of a quick 'deep' images are over. The better our equipment gets the more faint stuff we can reach. This means even longer exposures to minimise signal to noise on these new faint bits.

It is the first law of the Universe!

1.There is no free lunch!

Bert

[cfranks]

Too true!

I didn't realise I have a DropBox account.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/91912006/smc_NII_23fbest85pc_HDMRT_TGVD.FTS

Edit: Forgot the jpg. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/91912006/smc_NII_23fbest85pc_HDMRT_TGVD.jpg

Charles

[Ross G]

Another great photo Bert.

Amazing detail.

Ross.

[Larryp]

Wow!

[jase]

WOW! So much detail Bert. Its hard to describe. I've not seen the SMC in such glory. With exception to the brighter knots and twists of nebulosity, most of the fainter details are obscured by stars in the traditional true colour RGB images. You've done a great job on the data acquisition and I like your rendition too. The faint nebulosity extensions are really showing through. Well done.

I had a little play with the data set you have graciously provided. I seriously could have spent considerably more time to extract more detail. I think detail would come from contrast work as opposed to sharpening. Its interesting to work with as the dynamic range is huge so tools like DDP have an advantage. There is no doubt more to extract. Would be even more fascinating working with OIII data I suspect.

The second image is perhaps my most favourite part of the image but there are so many other cool things going on. A very busy image. Larger version (2.6mb) available here (http://cosmicphotos.com/reprocessed/berts-smc-large.jpg) for a limited time.

Thanks for sharing. Really looking forward to your end result if you managed to nail the other emission lines.

[avandonk]

Thanks Jase for your input.

I think I have finally nailed down all my so called flexure problems.

Hysteresis in the system was the last nasty to tame.

This is a quick NII to red and OIII to green and blue at full res. 8MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2013_08/SMC_NB1.jpg


As you can see the stars are good everywhere. The NII and OIII data superimpose without coloured haloes.

Tonight is meant to be clear all night so I may get both SII and a decent RGB data sets.

Bert

[jase]

Yep, a ripper result Bert! The OIII data sure looks good. Will be interesting to match up against the NII to get a balance of the emission lines. I don't think I'd bother with SII being a galaxy, but that's just my opinion. Ha and NII are so close together so there's no need to get Ha, that's for sure. I think you'll do more justice with NII, OIII and RGB alone. Definitely get the RGB while the moon interference remains low anyway. Really looking forward to the end result. This one has me excited as there is so much going on.

[avandonk]

Jase I will collect the SII when the SMC is lowish and then collect six hours of RGB around the zenith.

But knowing I live in Melbourne I will most probably give up hope after the cloud comes in and get more pissed.

The main thing is that the system is singing! It is both predictable and consistent. A tautology no doubt!

Bert.