NGC 2467 "Snoopy's Holiday" 24hrs in narrowband

[Placidus]

NGC 2467 emission region in Puppis. Over the last 3 nights Trish and I quadrupled the previous exposure.

Full size image here. (http://www.mikeberthonjones.smugmug.com/Category/Star-Forming-Regions/i-3CcSMJb/0/O/NGC%202467%20Snoopy%20Ha%208%20OIII %209%20SII%2010hrs%20Punchier.jpg)

Imagine a rocket ship, nose-cone at top left, multiple ion-drive engines very blue at bottom right. Aboard the rocket is Snoopy, on a trip to the beach. His head is 30% of the way toward 10 o'clock, near the nose-cone. He is wearing a yellow bathing cap. Below his head, and 50% of the way toward 9 o'clock, is his yellow-green coat-hanger, for his clothes. His bright green and very large beach ball is 50% of the way toward 6 o'clock. Sadly, the rocket had caught fire, and there are billows of multi-coloured toxic smoke and flame heading all the way toward 12 o'clock. The paint-work at dead centre is blistered and black. Please wish Snoopy the very best of luck for 2015.

Aspen 16M on 20" PlaneWave CDK on MI-750. Hubble palette. H-alpha 8hrs, OIII 9hrs, SII 10hrs. Note: SII rich regions, mapped to red, will appear yellow, because they tend to overlap with much stronger H-alpha, which is mapped to green.

Cheers,
Mike n Trish

[Andy01]

Great story Mike, cool pic too! Well done :)
Cheers
Andy

[strongmanmike]

Ooooo-Kay :whistle:......see it alll...yeeeeah :scared2:

Naaah I do see Snoopy though :)

Great scale and details in there Mike and the iconic MBJ palette is growing on me...ahh, have I mentioned I would like your scope and mount :question:.....delivered :D

Mike

[Placidus]

Thanks, Andy. Glad you like it.



Thanks, Mike! The gear does have its warts. We're finding we're getting sharper images if we refocus once per hour. It's not temperature, it's mechanical wobble in the focuser. I've scripted the refocus, so it's all automatic, and only uses up 2.5 minutes in the hour, but it is a teensy bit irritating.

[marc4darkskies]

It's a spectacular object Mike and the detail is looking good. I'm really trying to like all the green - I really am! Not quite there yet though. :sadeyes: ;)

Cheers, Marcus

[alpal]

Hi Mike,
Were you inspired by Andy?
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=130026
That's a nice sharp picture - thanks for sharing.

cheers
Allan

[cometcatcher]

Awesome! It sure looks different in NB.

[strongmanmike]

Well! more reason to get rid of such rubbish :shrug: and you are in luck! I happen to love collecting rubbish :D Soooo...now to start building my 4th observatory.....do I have to go to tech and get my building lic. and SS welding cert now? :question:

[Bart]

I really like the object, although for me the colour is off.

I hope you do not get offended as I had to have a play as I would present it much differentley. Dealing with the pink stars was hard in a jpeg format, although you should get the idea.

[Placidus]

Hi, Marcus, Allan, Kevin, Mike, Bart,

Thanks for the pleasing observations regarding the sharpness, smoothness, and finer detail.

The beautiful green grass after summer rain, and the juicy raspberry stars seem to be the trouble.

My motivation for the excess of green is that quantitatively, there is MUCH MORE H-alpha emission than SII emission out there. Bit like a road map where there's much more green parkland than blue motor ways or red police stations.

An opposing philosophy, with which I'm comfortable, is to show the relative distributions of H-alpha, OIII, and SII, and make the whole thing come out colour balanced on average. There's a nice ESO shot that does that.

The third approach of trying to use narrowband filters to produce a natural-looking image has to me no scientific merit.

As it slowly dawns on me that not everyone likes green grass and raspberries as much as I do, I've prepared a much more balanced colour version in line with the second philosophy, but I'll not post it until I've done some straight RGB stars to drop in. That feels kinda legit, I suppose, although a bit conformist, mainstream, and sub-outrageous.

In the meantime, as the cloth salesman said, never mind the quality, feel the width !

[Andy01]

Mike, As there are no rules and all is fair in love and NB, your scientific approach has as much validity as anyone else's, so stick to your guns!

Mine is more of an aesthetic pursuit, simply to create images that please the eye. The science for me being the ability to capture DSO's that are so dim and far away they can't be seen, in another galaxy, at night, from a moving platform, and in my backyard!:eyepop:

That being said, NB offers so many choices. You can image under moonlight, reveal the unseen, and colour an image any which way you choose!

There are currently some dazzling NB images on this forum by Strongman Mike, RickS, Paul Haese, Bassnut, IanP, AlSam, yourselves and many others which celebrate the wonderful diversity that NB offers.

We are very fortunate that this forum provides such a wonderful medium for sharing our creative and scientific passion, and it's from experienced contributors like yourselves that relative newcomers like myself can learn so much. :thumbsup:

[Bassnut]

Excellent Mike. As a point of difference to purely pretty pics, your proportional processing gives images an added point of scientific interest others (and me) dont bother with, so I quite like what you do now, its always good to see different renditions of objects we all image.

[RickS]

I think it's great, Mike & Trish, although the palette is very different from what I typically try to do. Not much else to add that hasn't been said already!

Cheers,
Rick.

[multiweb]

This one is getting deeper and deeper. Good stuff! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[DJT]

Great image Mike n Tish. Though it should be the MTBJ pallet as this is a collaboration between your good selves?

Swimming around in the detail on an iPad is great fun. Thanks for sharing

[Paul Haese]

I like the detail here Mike. The blues are nice too, but the green is not my thing despite what you are aiming for in this image.

Just as a point of interest you could shrink the stars in the SII to help remove the magenta stars. Those are a bit distracting oval. Then use something like star shrink from Russell Crowman to reduce your star sizes.

[Placidus]

Hi, Paul, David, Rick, Marc,

Thanks everyone for the good suggestions. I've reprocessed it, losing the magenta stars. Come new moon I'll try replacing them with RGB.

Big one here. (http://www.mikeberthonjones.smugmug.com/Category/Star-Forming-Regions/i-vZfHH3N/0/O/Snoopy%20Demagnetized.jpg)

Best,
Mike

[alpal]

Hi Mike,
that's a big improvement.
I would suggest an increase in contrast only in the bright area of the left middle using a blurred mask with a brush.
I'll post an example if you want?

cheers
Allan

[RickS]

Nice repro, Mike.

[Placidus]

Thanks, Allan. I know what you mean, and almost did it.



Cheers, Rick. I think I should "demagentify" the NB stars routinely from now on. I can see that they are distracting.

[multiweb]

Love the repro Mike. Somehow more variety in the colors accentuates the details and those round stars are to die for. One for the pool room. :thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

This is a lovely, grand and professional looking result mate, great job :thumbsup:

Err?...have I mentioned that I would like your scope....:face:

Mike
want your scope...

Love your scope :prey2:

Need your scope....:help2:

[Placidus]

Thanks, Marc! Pumping the water out of the pool room now.



Thanks, Mike. very kind. I want to say I'm "tickled un-pink".

Best,
Mike

[marc4darkskies]

Love the repro Mike! A beautiful image! Much more nuanced colour now ... and it doesn't remind me of Kermit the Frog :). Also like the more Gaussian look to the stars.

Cheers, Marcus

[Spookyer]

Very nice

[strongmanmike]

No....no, I can see him, yep, he's there....

:D

[Placidus]

Thanks muchly, Marcus. We've just put in 5.5KW of solar panels at the farm. I think that lets me move toward a less "green" look in narrowband.



Thanks!

Best, Mike

[Ross G]

Hi Mike,

Another great looking photo.

Amazing detail and sharpness.

Ross.