M83 now with colour and a Sidonio

[allan gould]

Damned clouds!!!!!!
Managed to get 3hr of 10 min subs L, 50 min G and B but NO R frames before the weather changed while I was using the GSO 10" RC scope with QSI583 camera. So i thought I may as well process what I have until the weather clears in a few days and I can get the R frames.
I was really impressed in that I was able to sync to a reference frame and goto the same position as an image I took last year to within 3 pixels using Sequence Generator Pro and plate solving. Focusing routines etc were a breeze and made imaging a pleasure.

ADDENDUM
Managed to get some more luminance data as well as the blue subs last night. This gives 5hr of L (1x1) and 50 min RGB (2x2)
Really not happy with the colour as I think its off due to the light pollution from BrisVegas but it was the best I could do under the conditions.
I was pleased to see several other small galaxies in the background other than the usual duo.

Sidonio done and softened stars and colour as suggested by Alpal

Comments welcomed.
Allan

[batema]

Fantastic detail Allan. Well done. Same happened to me last night with clouds. Beautiful dark sky location with clouds rolling through constanly.

[SkyViking]

Very nice indeed, great details all the way to the core. Looking forward to the colour version!
I've been thinking of taking the plunge with SGP too, but I don't have goto on the mount so was wondering if it's worth it in that case?

[RickS]

Shame you didn't get it finished, Allan. Looking very promising!

Cheers,
Rick.

[allan gould]

Thanks for the comment Mark. You just have to get it when you can but the clouds are a bugbear in the suburbs or a dark sky.


Gave this question some thought. Even if I didn't have go to then I would still get SGPro for the ability to alter a sequence on the fly, control of the QSI camera, auto filter contol and focus routine on filter change, as well as autofocus and tie in with PHD autoguiding for meridian flips and auto choice of guide star etc. I see you have a moonlight with stepper so you should be good. I must admit that using SGP's autofocus routine with temperature control (temperhum) refocusing or even refocusing every user defined number of frames is excellent. I've found that my focus is sharper than I get with a Bahtinov mask as it uses an algorithm that takes in the whole frame to get best focus and this puts it right in the critical focus zone for me.
There is a free 45 day trial to give it a go but I do love the goto and plate solving with my Losmandy mount. Pick up a second hand Gemini I?


Thanks Rick, will post the colour version when the clouds go away.
Allan

[Dennis]

Excellent work Allan, you did well to doge the patchy clouds that crept up later in the early evening in our suburb.

Cheers

Dennis

[strongmanmike]

Ahhh yes :sadeyes:



Hmm yes, that would be good :question: I currently do this manually with a move, take a frame, blink with a frame from previous night approach and hone in on the same field like that, mind you after doing it this way for so long now I do have it down pat and can get to the previous nights framing to within a pixel or two tolerance (0.8"/pix) in about 10min or so usually :)



Ah yes, this is the bit that I often waste a little time on unless the seeing is good (easy to know you are in perfect focus then) as I tend to fluff around a bit trying to get perfect focus and if the star is moving around and fuzzing in and out I often chase my tail for a few too many minutes :lol:

Nice start on M83 Al :thumbsup:

Mike

[DavidTrap]

Looking great Alan. Don't think you'll be doing much imaging tonight!

Mike - when are you going to try plate solving, like all the cool kids?

DT

[strongmanmike]

Guess I'm just not cool :ashamed: :help:

Old dog new tricks...? :question:

:P

[alpal]

Hi Allan,
The stars look a little hard but that's easy to fix.
The detail is extraordinary & you have just the right image scale with that RC.
I hope you can get some colour detail to finish it off.

cheers
Allan

[prokyon]

Wow, very sharp and detailed! I love monos ;)

[allan gould]

Appears not for the next few days, but I've left everything setup in the observatory and so it will not be difficult to get back on target and get some more data.

It took me a few attempts to get Elbrus and Astronomy.net set up for plate solving but the joy with SGPro is that if Elbrus fails then it rolls over to blind solve with astronomy.net and there is no messing about. Either can be done locally or over the internet. You can take an image of where you are, blind solve then go to the object and if you have a previous sequence that you want to continue with it will just match the scope image to the reference image to a few pixels and continue on with the sequence. Both these plate solvers are free but Pinpoint works really well with SGPro also. Its really helpful and just makes it easy to do from inside the house away from the mozzies.


Agree with that comment and will tidy the whole thing up with colour and Ha.
Thanks Allan.
Allan

[h0ughy]

m83 - so did you check for a SN? at least your imaging Allan

[peter_4059]

That looks good Allan. Hopefully we'll start to see some good weather now.

[alpal]

Allan,


Good - I look forward to it.

[allan gould]

Thanks for that Werner. I love monos too but generally due to necessity from not being able to get the RGB data.
Allan

[allan gould]

Yes I did as a matter of fact but nothing new. First time out for about a month and you tend to forget all the little things you need to do but now I have a protocol list.


Peter
For your image of the seagull nebula did you use the Losmandy mount or the EQ6 with the new belts? If the latter how did you find the guiding?
Thanks for the comment but let's enjoy some rain as I guess we did need it.
Allan

[allan gould]

Added colour in first post.
Allan

[RickS]

Great work, Allan! Nicely understated colour and good detail. I guess being able to grab data even with our unpredictable weather is the big advantage of that obsy of yours.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Dennis]

Looks lovely Allan. Nice stars, background and galaxy processing - a very pleasing rendition of this wonderful galaxy.

Cheers

Dennis

[ozstronomer]

Both very nice images Allan, the colour version really pops :thumbsup:

Did you process with Pixinsight or Photoshop?

[SkyViking]

The colour looks great Allan, very nice image indeed! And thanks for the thoughts on SGP, I'll have to look into it :thumbsup:

[peter_4059]

That is a great shot Allan. Well done.

[allan gould]

Thanks for the nice comments Rick and Dennis.
It's great being able to leave everything set up in the observatory waiting for a break in the weather and then walking in and knowing that you can just start off exactly where you left off in a few minutes. It took a bit longer last night as I changed my guiding setup to the WSG part of the QSI camera with the 10" GSO RC as I wanted to see how well it would guide. stars were a little elongated at that focal length but the stars were pinpoints on downloading, so I was happy that I had an alternative to my usual guide scope setup.
Any way glad you liked the final product.
Allan

[allan gould]

Sad to say that I used photoshop for the whole exercise. I must use PI at some stage but it's now mainly levels and curves with some faint sharpening routines.

SGP really came to the fore last night as I just used an image from the last session which had been plate solved to setup the imaging session. I slewed to the object using my planetarium program, did a blind plate solve to see where I actually was, told the scope to go to the centre of my reference frame from the last session. Then did a confirmation plate solve to make sure it was within a few pixels of the last session and just continued on with my imaging session getting the subs that were not captured in the last session.
Worth the money in my opinion.



Thanks for that Peter, glad you liked it.
Allan

[alpal]

Looking very nice in colour.
I would like to see a much larger version.

[Shiraz]

:thumbsup: great image Allan - everything is spot on.

[allan gould]

I was not happy with the lack of star colours nor that of the galaxy and thought that the latter was a bit full on and so I decided to do a Sidonio and reprocess the image to make it softer or less vibrant.


Hope you like this version Ray.

[LewisM]

Love the third version. Less blue makes it look more natural IMHO (SILENCE SIDONIO! :) )

[Peter.M]

I actually like the second one the most, the third has a cast across the whole image. I like the core of the third image but the colour from the second


Interesting that you say that because of all the galaxies the one that I think should be blue is this one. The classic hubble image of this is blue with the HA regions standing out like traffic lights!

[strongmanmike]

Nah nah Lewis :P

Looking good Allan, all the colour palettes are ok comes down to personal preference probably (blue is good :D)

Mike

[atalas]

Nice work Allan.

[alpal]

Hi Allan,
I like the colours in the first colour version because you can
see the red nebula areas better.
Also there is more detail around the core in the mono version
than is appearing in either of the colour versions.
I would like to see a little more colour in the stars.

Your data is so good that I reckon - wait about a week
& have another go at processing - it will be worth it
just to extract that last 10% more out of your image.

cheers
Allan

[Peter.M]

At first I was unsure with sgp, it didn't have planetarium software and moveing in and out everynight I would have no pointing model. I wrote the maker and he asked me why I wanted a pointing model at all? And told me to try without. Since then I have seen the power of it in action. No model not pointed anywhere near the target it will blind solve where it is and still get the scope in the correct spot! Amazing.

[LewisM]

Ah well, Hubble and Mike make mistakes :)

A lovely image of a beautiful GX.

[strongmanmike]

Maybe Hubble does... :question:

:lol:

[allan gould]

Obviously Im going to have to take a step back and try and blend a few of these images together. When I concentrated on the galaxy, the stars suffered. And when I concentrated on the stars the galaxy suffered. So I guess the best option lies somewhere in between which I can see is the case after having left this for a while.
I get so tied up looking at doing one thing and really loose sight of the overall perspective or at least I sometimes do.
The other thing I feel is that I need to get far more colour data as this is where things come apart, but of course the moon is up and a cyclone is hitting up north bringing clouds and rain etc. Ho Hum!
Anyway I guess there is no correct way but glad you liked it.
A final Sidonio will be done and thats it.

[allan gould]

Peter
Glad you like SGP as I keep finding little things hidden away in the program that really help me do what I want to do.
Just a complete program that is brilliantly supported by the authors.
Allan

[strongmanmike]

Famous last words..... ;)

[RickS]

Final Sidonio... that must be an oxymoron :lol: