The Red Knight

[strongmanmike]

Haaaad to do one too with the new gear :scared3: :D

Seeing was not too bad for the Ha but quite poor for the RGB which made getting the RGB stars to match the Ha ones more difficult buuuut I got there....

Full Frame (http://upload.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153469815/original)

The Red Knight (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153633971/original) (close up)

Now... back to galaxies :mad2:........:lol:

Mike

[Stevec35]

Nice job Mike. It could do with just a tad more contrast though in my opinion.

Cheers

Steve

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Steve, you're right and I actually had a higher contrast version but uploaded the lower contrast version...so I have swapped them over now :P

Mike

[astronobob]

High Ho Silver, oh, that doesnt work :rolleyes:
Mike, them small pixels are showing their worth :cool2:, , Dig the colour & a great smooth result from a nights worth ! Nice show . .
Maybe a couple more Galaxies out ther ya reckon - Go Get em ! ;) Looking forward to em .

[Peter.M]

Maby a little pink for my liking, but the data is great!

[RickS]

Great horsie, Mike!

[multiweb]

Very nice colors. :thumbsup:

[h0ughy]

red knights black knights - i suppose the knights in shiny armour were shot!!?? lovely work Mr S - what an eyeful

[gregbradley]

Beautiful image Mike
One of the best HH I've seen
Greg

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Bob



Awe come'on Pete, Ha + Hb = magenta = pink = looooove :love2: :lol:

yeah I knew some would find it colourful...seems I just loooove colour :D



Cheers Rick...friggin Horsehead :scared....:bit boring huh?...no faint jets :lol:



Colour? :question:..hmmm?..you remember what that is Marc :question:....:lol:

Cheers mate :thumbsup:

Mike



Filling cones that is my quest :P



Glad you think so Greg, actually...if you look at Martins 2009 APOTY winning image meah... I think this holds up ok, for a quicky I NEED TO IMAGE A NEBULA :scared: fix :lol:

[TimberLand]

I just can't see it but there must be a galaxy somewhere through all that gas and dust. Otherwise why would you take sucha fantastic shot of a dark knight.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

Justin.

[Paul Haese]

Nice shot Mike. Pretty smooth overall. Good detail.

[Rod771]

Looks very Good Mike!

Well done :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Oh yeah, there are galaxies in there Justin, don't worry...just need a good IR filter :P

Justin



Neigh, t'is just a Horseshead :P only so much one can do and I definitely wasn't going to hammer this one with long exposure, although some Lum might have been useful...because of the weather it took me 3 nights in the end anyway :doh:



Cheers Rod

[kinetic]

Lovely result Mike.
FWIW I reckon a crop of a bit more background really makes the horse
sing...hmmm, bad choice of verb, I think you know what I mean.
A real close crop is awesome but a zoom back out just shows how deep
you really went, emphasising the dynamic range.
Anyway, WTH would I know, great job!

Your site mentions you didn't use darks, is there simply no need to at 20C below?
I notice when I do extreme stretching, even on the humble QHY-8
which gets down to around +/- 5 deg around zero, I can see that using darks helps a lot,
mainly because it calibrates out not only hot pixels, but readout noise?
Does the flat do that, excuse my ignorance, I've never used flats.

Steve

[strongmanmike]

Oh yeah that area looks great in a 2deg field and I get that with the ProLine 16803 but the full frame link there is the field I have with the SX camera...so are you saying you prefer the full frame version over the crop? I only included the close crop cause, well, I was just..?.. horsing around :P



With the Starlightxpress it seems to not really benefit from darks. Unbeknownst to many imagers darks actually add noise as do flats, of course you can mitigate this effect largely by taking lots of darks and lots of flats to average out the noise but in the end they do add noise.. so in a perfect world they wouldn't be necessary...the answer is a nice low noise quiet chip (as is in in the SXVR-H694) then median combine out any residual hot pixels, have no vignetting and very clean filters and CCD window so flats are not necessary - easy! I am nearly there, I get a bit of vignetting from the small 1.25" filters so I have 36mm filters sitting here waiting to be installed.

I have been imaging at -20C since getting the camera earlier this year so while this low temp may assist I think this Sony chip is still very smooth even at higher temps.

It must be said that chips do have variations in sensitivity across their lattice and flats do address this and certainly with a big chip I think flats are probably more necessary but a small chip like the H694 I recon if you get all the variables mentioned above right you are home and hosed....super easy high class imaging :D :thumbsup:

I have stretched the bejesus out of my data an not a single dust mote to be seen...touch wood..for when I change over filters :prey: :lol:

Mike

[cybereye]

Mike,

I look at this image and think "The Godfather". I wonder why...?

Fantastic image of something that has eluded me for a very long time. :thumbsup:

Cheers,
Mario

[marco]

Nice resolution here Mike :) I would actually call it the pinky knight :P Not sure if I like the flossy color, I suppose this one got your tender side coming out during processing ;)

Clear skies
Marco

[E_ri_k]

Very nice :thumbsup:

[broca]

Excellent work Mike but I thought you only imaged galaxies??

[strongmanmike]

He he, ah yes, well, it wasn't delivered to my observatory by a dog food company as Mr Coppola claimed :question: :lol:

Blood is a much deeper red, this gas is a lovely Magenta (Ha+Hb) = ..?..flossy pink :question:...that's my take on it anyway :P I've come up with it before (to the ire of some :tasdevil:)...so I guess I'll come up with it again :lol:





Cheers guys and I'll probably..may? do a agalaxy again next buuut then again...I do love the magenta pinks out there in the nebulae fields :question:

[DJT]

And for the next runner, the colour! I like the pink. There is a reference in Wikipedia which refers to the area being"red/pink" so if it says it in Wikipedia, it must be true.;)

Great image.

[Ross G]

A beautiful Horse Head photo Mike.

So sharp and detailed.

Great colour.

I love the composition of the full frame.

Ross.

[strongmanmike]

A quick google of horshead images shows as many red versions as magenta versions and yes magenta/pink versions across the board (Pink CFHT image attached)...so in the end I think it comes down to what your eye perceives from the examples it has in its mind, what you like or prefer purely from a personal perspective or where your particular data set takes you during processing...which is all good to me :thumbsup:

Having said all that...in this case if I had collected some Lum and more colour I could perhaps have added some more variations to the pink/magenta and brought out more of the brownish dust...maybe next time...after a few more galaxies :thumbsup:



:lol: glad you liked the colour Ross...you girl baby you :thumbsup:

Cheers Mike

[DJT]

Checked out the CFHT site and the HH poster art, I see what you mean about the brown dust. If I ever try a HH with the ccd will bear that in mind.

Cheers

[tornado33]

I remember seeing an old S&T article of the Horsehead, shot with the AAT I think showing faint background galaxies shining through the hydrogen just above the Horsehead, and lo and behold they are visible in Mike's image. Have a careful look at some of the faint stars, they are not pointlike but slightly diffuse. Incredible that just 12 inches of aperature can now record these when coupled to modern electronic imagers and operated by people who know their stuff :) Well done!

[David Fitz-Henr]

That's a nice image Mike showing good detail; :thumbsup: nothing wrong with the pink colour either - good to see a bloke in tune with his feminine side :lol: You make some good points too regarding noise, etc - it's no good stacking masses of light frames if you reintroduce lots of noise via insufficient dark / flat frames!

[strongmanmike]

Yes, can't reveal dust very well using Ha as Lum



Cheers Scott, yes very faint very distant galaxies shinning through foreground objects is pretty cool to capture, not sure if you saw my recent NGC 1300...picked up some bloody remote buggers (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/153578300/original) in there :eyepop: :thumbsup:




Cheers David...not sure on the fuss over the pink really:question:..that's actually, more or less, what colour it is :shrug: ...although I do indeed have great tune with my feminine side too of course :evil2: :D