The Sprinkler and mega distant galaxies - another jet..?

[strongmanmike]

Although a deceptively small 6' X 4' in size, I have always loved this galaxy in Eridanus, NGC 1300, it reminds me of a lawn sprinkler spinning slowly :)

When Hubble released it's version in around 2004 I was gob smacked by the number of very distant background galaxies that could be seen through the disc of NGC 1300 :eyepop:.. it was an incredible site!

Well now almost 10 years later and armed with my little AG12 I can actually pick many of them up, which to me is really quite remarkable. I have no idea of their magnitudes but if there aren't some in there fainter than magnitude 23 or so, I'd be very surprised :)

NGC 1300 and NGC 1297 pair (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153577612/original)

Full Frame (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153577563/original) (I actually decided to use flats for this image:D)

Close Up (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153577615/original) (100% crop)

Unbelievably MEGA distant galaxies! (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153578300/original)

Well not a Jet but some FAINT Extensions (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153621701/original)

Mike
Sigh...Oh to be imaging from Cerro Tololo :sadeyes:

[petershah]

another fine image there Mike...you better slow down or there will be nothing left to image at this rate ;-)

[gregbradley]

Very nice Mike.

It is almost inconceivable we are imaging such distant objects from basically our backyard.

Greg.

[alpal]

Nice work Mike.
The Hubble comparison shows just how powerful the Hubble is.
I wish they would have made a whole fleet of Hubble telescopes
instead of just the one that will crash into the ocean in a few years.

Still - it's amazing that you could pick up those faint galaxies at all.

[LightningNZ]

Wow, geez Mike that's pretty awesome. Was this taken from Murrumbateman? ~Mag 23 is nuts. I've gotta get my kit mobile so I can escape Belconnen.

Something else that amazes me is that you used no darks on this! That H694 seems like a hell of a good chip.

Cheers,
Cam

[RickS]

Another wonderful galaxy image, Mike! I hope you'll leave a couple for me :lol:

How much do you tweak the colour? My galaxies mostly lean towards a cyan colour with a little red/magenta in the Ha areas. I have tried a variety of colour calibration methods but they don't seem to make a lot of difference.

Cheers,
Rick.

[astronobob]

so its this type of galaxy's for greener grass Mike, we've had enough rain for awhile with out adding sprinklers matee :P
Thats a terrible ly good image Mike, quite a 'spinout' result and done well to resolve the dark arms in that smaller galaxy 'low-right' too :thumbsup:

[John Hothersall]

Wondered if this might be next, this galaxy is kind of perfect - processed very nicely. Always an eyeopener what we can get v professional.

John.

[jase]

'bout time you got serious and took some flats. Enjoyed the full frame Mike. A very cool galaxy pairing. :thumbsup:

[iceman]

Lovely views Mr Sidonio. Quite a neat galaxy.

[Dennis]

Such a pretty galaxy indeed Mike, excellent work as usual.:thumbsup:

Love you presentations and entertaining, yet informative, narrative.:)

Cheers

Dennis

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Peter, slow down?? maaate I have been snapping the heavens for over 30 years now and there is an entire Universe out there to capture :eyepop: ...statistically I only have about 30 more years left :question: :scared:



I think the profoundness is a bit lost on some, worrying about perfect processing, perfect star images, how much mega data has been collected or how your work is received around the World etc is not really the point, we need to look at our data more, I mean reeeally look and soak up what it has captured and what it is showing....:thumbsup:



Yep no argument how amazing the Hubble scope is, can't compete on the depth and resolution table, that's for sure!... but it's images are a great way of searching and conformation of what our little optical thimbles have managed to collect under our mortal murky skies :thumbsup:



Hi Cam, I'm in Wallaroo, kinda on the way to Murrumbateman. Yes darks are basically unnecessary with this awesome little camera, I just dither my light frames and then median compine in pre processing - easy :thumbsup: I wasn't using flats until now either but my 1.25" filters do vignette even this small chip slightly at the fast F3.8 of this scope...so I have some slightly bigger 36mm filters on their way which will hopefully remove the remaining vignetting :thumbsup:



He he , don't worry Rick there are plenty of galaxies out there for you..oh, let's see..?, probably of the order of a few hundred million within your grasp :question: :D Colour?...mate I just wing it, my minds eye has a picture in it and I process to try and match that, like us all, my minds eye is influenced by several factors including previous views of the galaxy and what looks right based on my understanding of galaxy colours :)

Mike



Cheers Bob, I didn't want to water the image down and my head was spinning during the processing flow for this one but in the end I flooded it with colour... which isn't everyone's pitcher :P

Mike



I love this time of year, so many amazing looking galaxies in our southern skies to chose from. Would love to know where I could find out what and how bright those distant galaxies are?

Mike



Bah Flats!...someone should blow flats up :einstein: Richard Crisp will kill me but I have some bigger filters on the way to remove the vignetting...let's see ;)



Cheers Mike :thumbsup:



Glad you enjoyed the view big D :D, there is so much more to objects than just how perfectly (or not) processed they are..there is processing to reveal hidden identities as well ;) :thumbsup:

[Rod771]

Wow! Galaxies everywhere in that one Mike.

Well done :thumbsup:

[cybereye]

Mike,

I've got to say it - this image of the Sprinkler Galaxy has "whet" my appetite for more from the House of Sidinio!

Fantastic image... :thumbsup:

Cheers,
Mario

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Rod, yes there are a few huh? :)



"whet" my appetite..?...hmm?..no, don't get it :question: :shrug:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz2LaJOVAiA

Mike Smoke too much

[strongmanmike]

Why didn't someone point out the granulated background :scared: :shrug:...didn't notice it yesterday after having no sleep :doh:...now fixed :thumbsup:

Mike

[h0ughy]

well i did notice that, but rather than upset a 500lb budgie i let it lie without comment - which is wrong and you're far enough away to say in the one breath it is a great image but lacks clarity:rofl:

love your work Mike:thumbsup:

[marco]

Another great one Mike, the H694/AG12 couple is great for these small targets when seeing cooperates :)

Ciao
Marco

[cybereye]

I thought it was a funny pun - maybe I was wrong...:confuse3:

[strongmanmike]

Oi :mad2:...I'm only 300lbs! actually just under now :whistle: :lol:

Hopefully some clarity has been restored :D



Yes absolutely right they work well together. Google finds very few amateur images of this galaxy on the net actually, the only amateur image I could really find that was significantly better was RJ Gabany's version done with a 20"RC :shrug:...it is an incredible piece of work of course but it has his usual are they real or not :question: details look ;)



Yes it was funny, hence the Mr Smoke too much link :P...I love daddy joke puns :D

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Good image of 1300 Mike!:thumbsup::thumbsup:

It's listed at Mag 11.1 but seems much fainter than this.
Did you find this when you were imaging ?

Cheers,

Justin.

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Justin, hey, I'll take a good any day :thumbsup:

Regarding the faintness..naaah not really, the whole shape of the galaxy was visible in a 10min bin 1X1 sub, the outer arms were very grainy of course :)

Mike

[gregbradley]

A bit off topic but I did some experimenting Jase as the no-flats is controversial and goes against traditional wisdom and practice for sure. At first I figured it was Starlight Express marketing BS. But perhaps due to the camera's extremely low read noise I found with trialling many different flats that they always introduced significant noise to the image and degraded the smoothness of the data.

If your camera and filters are clean and you don't suffer from vignetting it may actually make more sense to use a gradient handling processing routine like Gradient Xterminator, PixInsight Dynamic Background Extractor or StarTools to handle.

I am not 100% sure I can't get a better result with flats but that's what my testing has shown so far with the CDK17 and Trius 694. I get very little vignetting with my setup - essentially none but strangely the darks on this camera do show some uneveness, perhaps even amp glow so darks and perhaps bias make more sense than Flats with this one.

Greg.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Thanks Mike!

I guess that's the difference between a 12" with a quality CCD and an 8" with DSLR.
Still I'll have to try again on 1300, see what I can come up with.

Cheers,

Justin.

[strongmanmike]

Even with a fairly small chip my 1.25" filters still vignette the steep F3.8 light cone slightly, so I have a full set of Astronomik LRGBHaSIIOIII 36mm filters on the way :D these will provide about 6 or 7mm more clear filter aperture, I recon this should do the trick ;) Any residual vignetting gradients will most likely clean up with a touch of gradient removal. In the 4 months or so of imaging with my new Starlightxpress set up I have not seen a single dust donnut, even under the notoriously extreme stretching I do for my deep field comparisons :D

...this Sony chip puts us in a new era of imaging, the days of the noisy SBIGs with Kodak chips are loooong gone :thumbsup:

Mike



Good luck I am sure you will be successful Justin :thumbsup:

Mike

[RobF]

Love it Mike. Really enjoying your new found galaxy productivity, back in the dark skies around Canberra.

Ummm, isn't there just a teeny weeny little too much magenta in there again though? :confuse3: :scared3:

[strongmanmike]

WHAT? :mad2: did you say too much MAGENTA :fight:

right.....I will tear that sofa apart and rip ya bloody (magenta) arms off :tasdevil:

:rofl:

Thanks Robbo, I did nearly 1.5hours of Ha just to bring out the HII regions (obviously) if you look at other amateur images of this galaxy most are essentially colourless, I wanted to reveal something in the arms and see some colouuuuur :P

Yeah being under better skies and with a dome now I am very happy and have finally been able to hammer galaxies with this cool fast newt from England :drink:

He he

Mike
Ma genta... is your genta :question:

[strongmanmike]

Well you knew I'd do it :P...

I stretched my 6 hours of Luminance data and sure enough there are some very faint extensions

There is a non stellar object GSC 5875 00352 that the upper extensions seem to or might be connected too...interesting :question:

Faint Extensions of NGC 1300 (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153621701/original)

Any suggestions? This image used flats so it is properly calibrated too

Mike

[Ross G]

Another great looking galaxy photo Mike.

I love the colours....I think my favourite of your current galaxy photos.

Ross.

[SkyViking]

Seems I missed this one Mike, what a stunner :) I've been too busy tinkering in the obs to attend the forums much lately :eyepop::lol:
I love this galaxy and your processing of it, and yes I too was blown away when that Hubble image came out. Those 'see-through' background galaxies are amazing, it's cool that you were able to pick some of them up.
I actually have a very old shot of it with the webcam, taken many years ago (it's rubbish so I will spare you the details, lol :lol:) Probably something to add to my growing target list, if the clouds ever clear here...

[Shiraz]

Nother one - really fine image Mike. Please don't get sick of imaging these things - they are just great to look at.

Flats!!!

[strongmanmike]

Glad you like the colours Ross, bit vibrant I guess but just seemed to work for me :)



Cheers Rolf, we will be sharing the photons :love2:..you take the ones falling near Auckland and I'll grab those hitting Canberra :P



Thanks a lot Ray, I do love imaging galaxies they are the real Deep Sky objects :thumbsup:

Ah yes Flats....my full set of 36mm filters arrived last week,. just have to install them now, so we will soon see if I have to continue with these dastardly things :scared:

[TimberLand]

Background galaxies everywhere. I bet if you stretch the original you would get a bunch more. The number of elongated faint fuzzies in that shot is a true measure of your skill and gear. Top job.

Just like visual astronomy just on a monitor no averted vision required.


Justin

[Bassnut]

I like the close up Mike, very smooth, excellent work !.

[strongmanmike]

Stretch some more you recon :question:...what like this (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153621701) ;)



Cheers Freddo

Mike