Molecular Cloud in Octant (added RAW fits!)

[marco]

Octans is an inconspicuous constellation introduced by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, its name is Latin for the eighth part of a circle, but it is named after the octant, a navigational instrument. Octans is notable as the location of the south celestial pole but, unlike the north pole, it has no bright pole star and does not contain many deep sky objects. In exchange it contains a vast complex of dust and molecular clouds that is rarely imaged and so I decided to give it a try (to a bit of it at least ;)).

Octant Molecular Cloud (http://www.glitteringlights.com/Images/Nebulae/i-KtF89sj/A)

The blue reflection nebula close to the center of the image is cataloged as GN 19.41.5 and is merely 4' across.

Hope you will like this one.

Clear skies
Marco

[multiweb]

That looks great Marco. I'd be interested in your processing technique to bring up faint stuff like this. Every time I tried I failed miserably. It would be great if you could post the broad process and flow.

[strongmanmike]

Lovely area Marco and beautifully presented as usual :thumbsup:...but look at all that dirty disgusting dust all over the image though :eyepop: :shrug:...need to process that out mate :screwy:

:P

Amazing work

Mike
Comedian

[LightningNZ]

Wow, I had no idea there was so much there. The little reflection neb is quite pretty.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who's neglected the vacuuming lately.

Cheers,
Cam

[RickS]

I love the dusty ones. Great image, Marco!

[Regulus]

That's wonderful Marco. Great image.

Trevor

[naskies]

Lovely work, Marco. You have a knack for imaging celestial dust :)

[Paul Haese]

You have hoovered up well. Love the colour and detail.

[Ross G]

Grear photo Marco.

Amazing detail.

Ross.

[nebulosity.]

+1

[LewisM]

I would pay handsomely to sit and watch a master like this bringing out the details and still managing to balance it all so well.

Brava Marco, BRAVA!

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Yet again you show us how it's done!

Great work as usual Marco!:thumbsup:

Cheers,

Justin.

[RobF]

Yes, beautiful work. I had wondered about these regions after hints from Malin et al its a dusty area. Awesome! :thumbsup:

[jase]

Lovely work Marco. You continue to raise the bar with your high quality output. I'm pleased others are shooting this area of the sky too. There are a few other interesting features in Octans worth following up. Well done and thanks for sharing.

[cosmophoton]

An impressive image! Our star atlases don't mention those dark nebulae ;)
Cheers,
Luiz

[gregbradley]

Great work Marco. Does Tom Davis have a competitor for imaging dust areas??

Greg.

[Phil Hart]

Another lovely image Marco and a region I know you've worked in before. Great work!

Phil

[marco]

Thanks guys, been away for few days and couldn't post before.



Thanks Phil, actually this was my first attempt to this area but I will give it more shots since there are many other bits of the complex that worth few hours of exposures :)



Haha, perhaps Greg, surely I love these dusty areas semi unknown :P



Thanks Luiz



I agree with you Jase, I will try some other patches around there soon or later, it is very intriguing :)



Thanks Rob :)



Thanks Justin




Thanks Ross!



Thanks Paul :)



Thanks Dave :)



Thanks Trevor !



Thanks Rick



Thanks Cam, I like too that little reflection nebula :)



Hahaha Mike, sure need a vacuum cleaner in my observatory, and also will give my monitor a wipe too ;) :thumbsup:







Thanks for the interest, in reality my process flow is quite simple, most of the result is coming from the very dark skies I have and relative long exposures I take. For you to try, I have uploaded the 270 mins luminance of this image here (55 MB): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45290042/Octant_Cloud_L_270m.zip

In pixinsight
1) trim the image a bit removing non overlapping borders
2) DBE to remove gradient
3) intensity transformation
4) Noise reduction with wavelets (http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3184.0 Scroll down through this posting for a very useful tutorial on ATWT from Juan Conejero)
5) Star mask and Morphological reduction (3x3 and 0.7 intensity).

If you have pixinsight you can try on the image linked :)
Let me know if you get it working!

Clear skies
Marco

[Miaplacidus]

Beautiful image.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you didn't image that from Shanghai.

[SkyViking]

Wow, that's another superb image from you Marco. The dust looks so delicate and detailed and the whole image is a joy to look at.
Thanks for posting your workflow, I was amazed how similar it is to mine. PixInsight is really a fantastic tool!

[Shiraz]

Wonderful image Marco - subtle and beautiful.