a fairly hi res view of the eta carina nebula - a few Boks

[Shiraz]

Hi

finally had some gold plated seeing - a bit below 1.5 arcsec and it stayed that way for over 2 hours :thumbsup:. Didn't need much processing, just a bit of sharpening and tidying of stars (had a little bit of flexure and had to image with 3 minute subs to keep it under control). Maybe overdid the sharpening a bit at the expense of noise, but it was so exciting to finally see some whispy fine detail coming out of an image that I couldn't get my foot off the accelerator :lol:.

The detail looks a bit untidy in places, but seems to be consistent with that in higher res images - particularly pleased with the Bok globules. This is a slightly enlarged crop (0.829arcsec/pix) from a larger image - thought it looked interesting this way.

thanks for looking. regards Ray

http://www.astrobin.com/full/169028/0/?real=&mod=

[Rod771]

Lovely and sharp Ray! Glad you caught some great seeing. Nice one! :thumbsup:

[TR]

Ray, That looks very nice. I love the detail in there. Seeing is so important, and it doesn't happen enough for us.

Terry

[strongmanmike]

Well...pretty impressive Ray :) 1.5" huh?...almost Chilean, must have been exciting watching that guide star?

Yes the sharpening is noticeable but I don't care, the detail is just so cool to view. keep that foot down mate, I'm a fan :thumbsup:

What sort of sharpening did you apply?

Great stuff

Mike

[Shiraz]

thanks Rod - never had anything like this good before.


Thanks Terry. Yes, seeing is king.


Hi Mike - thanks. I have not seen seeing like this - must be what the high altitude guys get I suppose.

sharpening was nothing special: upscale image, mask stars, wavelet enhancement of high frequency components, touch up with unsharp mask - all done on the stretched image. No deconvolution was used with this seeing and sampling.

regards Ray

[Ross G]

Sharp, detailed and smooth tones.

A great looking monochrome photo Ray.

Ross.

[RickS]

Very cool, Ray! The seeing gods have been kind for a change :)

[Placidus]

Hi, Ray,

Possibly the best Fickle Finger I've ever seen. Normally there's that pesky star on the knuckle of the upraised finger that burns out and distorts the finger, but you have it razor sharp and in digital totality. The same applies for the rest of the image. I love it.

Best, Mike

[multiweb]

:eyepop: That's really cool Ray. That's the level of details I'm trying to get. :bowdown:

[gregbradley]

A wonderfully sharp image Ray. That does have a lot of detail.

Great work.

Greg.

[SpaceNoob]

Very sharp and a whole heap of fine detail! There be boks!

I was surprised at the number of Boks visible within this region when I captured a few subs recently, they're everywhere! Actually, there's just a lot going on everywhere through that part of the sky. There's some cool shockwaves / ripples too (whatever they're called).

[Paul Haese]

Its a cool area Ray. The sharpening looks good to me and yes SA has had some nice seeing of late. I should really be out planetary imaging. One night last week I was getting FWHM values on the RC at 1.16 for a couple of subs. Having seen your image I went and gave mine a little bit of a tweak on the sharpening. Are you going to do colour? Mystic Mountain looks great.

[Geoff45]

Really impressive Ray. That tack sharp detail is mindblowing.
Geoff

[Regulus]

That's a very, very nice photo to look at Ray.
Very impressive all that detail.
Cheers - Trevor

[Shiraz]

thanks very much Ross.


It doesn't happen too often. I suspect that the seeing is normally governed by a rather more malevolent force than the gods.


thanks Mike. I hadn't taken much notice of that aspect of the image - thanks for pointing it out. Seems like there is just no substitute for good seeing - deconvolution can partially restore an image, but a feature like the finger would not be recoverable.


thanks Marc. I would love to get this sort of detail more often - but it doesn't happen.


Thanks Greg. I was a bit unsure if the detail was real - looking at Hubble images it seems that it is (nothing even remotely like Hubble of course, but the main features are the same, which is comforting)



Yes, there are blobs and arcs and shock fronts all over the place. I was really pleased to be able to just see the two major jets on the mystic mountain as well.


thanks very much Paul. there have been some good patches of seeing, but the clouds have stuffed it up during the moon free periods - very frustrating. During this session, the short period half flux radius reported by Nebulosity was under 1 pixel some of the time, which translates to under 1.8 arc sec FWHM. The FWHM measured on some of the subs was well under 2 arc sec including guiding errors and sampling spread. The underlying seeing must have been under 1.5 arcsec - never seen anything better.
I intend to do some colour.


Thanks Geoff. it was fascinating to see the detail emerge with a little bit of sharpening - one of those "crikey, have a look at this" moments that are the icing on the cake in this hobby.


Thanks very much Trevor.

regards Ray

[Paul Haese]

My theory is that we are heading into another drought cycle here in SA. I have been watching the rain totals closely for the last 7 years and the satellite moisture readings. Rainfall has been going down for the last two years after the peak of the drought breaking rains. It looks similar to the events of 2007-2008. Seeing has been generally increasing from the last few years too overall with fewer periods of bad seeing occurring. When the moisture level drops in the atmosphere good seeing is generally better. Like I said, it is a theory at this stage but I am happy to get better seeing that I usually get (as good as that is generally).

[Shiraz]

you could be right Paul - ENSO watch is currently projecting higher than normal odds of an el nino developing later this year. The local weather sure has been very dry, but the clouds have been a bit of a problem over here - when the winds are warm from the southeast, they pick up water over the gulf and produce local clouds right overhead.