IC 2944 - The Gungan Nebula

[Andy01]

Ain't no chickens here!

Resembling Ja Ja Binks or the little alien dudes from Toy Story, here we have the the entire nebulosity of IC 2944, as seen through the new widefield Stellarvue SV70T.

There's a lot going on for the eye to see and the mind to imagine here.

If you look closely at the top left "eye" it somewhat resembles it's nearby neighbour, NGC 3324 Gabrielle Mistral, (or perhaps her husband) and the middle "eye" pays homage to the Cat's Paw, NGC 6334.

The right "eye" is the angry Hound of the Baskervilles, and the lower nebula resembles a big blue jumping flea!

I'm intrigued by the swirling blue region at the lower right, which is presumably O3 gas blown by hot stellar winds from the hot young stars in the centre.
The hard yellow S2 shock fronts also seem to act as a cosmic dam for the inner O3 region.

Anyway, lots more to see and ponder and that's why I invested in a wide field 'scope.

Lots of messing about with spacers, probably unnecessary as I'm now using Vic's original recommendation!

A bonus was picking up the "Pearl Cluster" lower left of the frame. But I'm not sure if my RGB stars are quite right, there's still a bit of unregistered red spill going on, so maybe I need to reprocess/re-align them or maybe capture them from a dark site with no LP.

This data set was all captured from my light polluted suburban backyard in Melbourne.

I was keen to go pretty deep on this, so courtesy of a nice burst of stable Melbourne weather, albiet under a full-ish moon, I spent five nights in all capturing around 30 hrs of Narrowband data, and 20mins ea of 1min R,G& B for the stars.

11hrs Ha 5nm
10Hrs S2 5nm
8 hrs O3 5nm - all in 1800sec Binx1 subs.

High res HERE (http://www.astrobin.com/241743/D/)

Was fun to tick this one off the bucket list, C&C welcome as always :)
Cheers

Andy

[h0ughy]

aptly named

[strongmanmike]

Yeah nice Andy :thumbsup: Bold colour, some of the edges look like they are on fire. You have framed the Running Chicken nicely there, had the AAO guys seen this episode of Star Wars back when they were looking at Schmidt plates and seeing running chickens, they may well have seen a Gungan instead :lol:

Mike

[Decimus]

Another spectacular image, Andy. Certainly good enough to grace APOD too!

It does have a fascinating shape as well as such vibrant colour. Great work.

PS Love that quotation (next to your avatar) from '2001: A Space Odyssey' - my favourite film.

[Placidus]

Wonderful!

Just looked through my "Brilliant works by Others" catalogue, and of 19 images of the Lambda Centauri region, not one shows the Whole Thing in full narrowband.

Trish and I have been hammering away at a teensy tiny corner of this, and it's great to see the Big Picture so beautifully presented in full NB.

I know you hate green, but I wonder if you haven't gone too far the other way, and over-emphasised the SII over H-alpha a tad.

Very best,
Mike

[Atmos]

When I first looked at it I thought "Hand of God". Then upon another few seconds of though it turned to "Amputated Hand of God" :P

I haven't looked at anything other than the 200kb version yet (need a fuller screen than the iPhone) but it is looking pretty damn good so far!

[marc4darkskies]

Except for the funky stars towards the bottom of the frame at full res (registration?), it ticks all the boxes for a compelling image (good colour, composition, detail, sharpness etc).

Cheers, Marcus

[vlazg]

Stunning as usual Andy, lovely little scope.

[Rick Parrott]

Amazing image, and not annoying at all (unlike Jar-Jar)!

[Flugel88]

Nice image Andy considering the obvious light pollution from Melbourne.I bet those narrowband filters help allot with that.

I love the colour its nicely balanced i think something i struggle to achieve with my narrowband attempts.

The wispy detail in the gassy bits is also very nice to the eye. :)

[Andy01]

Lol, cheers :)


Thanks Mike - I'm enjoying the widefield aspect - this is but the first of quite a long list of targets to revisit :)



Cheers Decimus - 2001 is my #1 favourite movie of all time, thanks for your kind comments too :)



Cheers for the positive feedback guys. I couldn't find too many NB images of the entire neb online either. Yes the 10hr S2 signal is very strong, but it gave it more depth, making the 3D effect stronger imo. It's fun to play with bigger data sets!



Cheers Colin - if memory serves there was an episode of Star Trek TOS that featured a giant hand in space which stopped the USS Enterprise. "Who Mourns for Adonis" I think was the title. Somthing about Apollo & the original Greek gods.



Thanks indeed Marcus. Yes, I too am not happy with those funky stars. I'll need to research a better RGB star processing method over Easter. Any tips?



Cheers mate - Hey we're heading up your way in May to judge the NT Pro Photo awards. Should be fun, never been to Darwin before :)



Aaah, yes - Ja Ja - the most annoying character in the Star Wars universe - very pleased he was left out of Episode 7 :)



Cheers Flugel - the extra hours of data really help to bring out the fine Ha details. Thanks for kind words :)

[Paul Haese]

Expansive field of field and nice composition Andy. Colour is ok but I think you are missing some green in the field. Personal taste really but I thought it worth mentioning.

[Slawomir]

Really nice image Andy, you must be really pleased with your new scope :thumbsup:

I will be looking forward to more images captured with your new baby :)

[Andy01]

Thanks Paul - Maybe there's no green and it's probably just me, but I prefer this colour, each to their own I guess :)



Delighted with it Suavi, looking forward to winter targets :)



Thanks for that valuable critique Marcus :thumbsup:
I've now redone the stars using a better method that I found online - http://spice.wa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/LRGB-Photoshop-v2.pdf

I had to reduce the width of the red frames by .03% though to get them to align correctly with the G & B. Hmmm, I'm still wondering why that is?

Latest High res version here - http://www.astrobin.com/full/241743/D/

[Ryderscope]

Stunning Andy. A beautiful journey.

[Geoff45]

Awesome shot Andy. Brilliant colours.

[multiweb]

Beautiful colors and details Andy. Thanks for the link to the tut. :thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

Much better Andy! :thumbsup: I do my star alignment and RGB combine in CCDStack using CCDIS/P. No clue why your red frames would need to be scaled at all - especially with Astrodon filters. :shrug:

[Bassnut]

wow, thats exceptional Andy. Monster detail, sharp as, and masterfull contrast and colour balance, it just pops. Sitting back a while, just looking at the overall effect, I cant think of a single thing I would do different, the lack of green is appropriate in this case. The image expresses a kind of firey agressivness that makes it stand out.

[rustigsmed]

Looks great Andy I'm thinking more Hypnotoad (Futurama) than Jar Jar.

Cheers

Russ

[gregbradley]

I like this image a lot. I like the colour scheme you have used which is that golden one which is kind of appealing.

The red stars you had to fix is probably because the scope is not focusing red well or there is extra scatter. Just keep it in mind next processing time you may need to do a tad of decon on the red channel to get the FWHMs to match with the other colours. Most APO scopes except for the very top tend to be weak in one channel.

Greg.

[deeplook]

Hi Andy,

wow, this is great! I really like the colors a lot and the detail is also amazing!

Markus

[RickS]

A very striking image, Andy. Well done!

[Placidus]

Andy, we keep coming back to this, as an excellent narrowband reference overview of the area. Really well done.

We keep seeing bits of your image that we want to zoom in on with our tiny 36 min arc FOV. So much to see.

Very best,
Mike n Trish

[Andy01]

Thanks Rodney, appreciate the comment :)



Cheers Geoff, glad you liked it too :)



You're welcome Marc, I really appreciate all your help and feedback to date :thumbsup:



Thanks for your help Marcus, yeah, it's a mystery - will see if shows up again on my next wide-field project.



Wow! Thanks Fred, that's high praise indeed from yourself good sir! Your images continue to inspire me to try harder, so many thanks :)



Lol Russ, I had to google that one, but you're right, cheers :)



Thanks for the insightful tip Greg, I'll try that, soooo much still to learn :thumbsup:



Cheers Markus, glad you liked it :)



Thanks Rick and congrats on your APOD this week, well done! :thumbsup:



Cheers M&T, it's a fascinating nebula - I look forward to seeing your results. This wide field thing is kinda exiting. The sense of freedom I have from no longer being restricted by my former FOV is quite liberating! I'm hoping to start another project this weekend.
Thanks for your kind words :)

[barx1963]

Andy
I see this shot is featured in Stellavues website (http://www.stellarvue.com/stellarshot ) along with a pic of you looking very relaxed at SV!!

Cheers

Malcolm

[Slawomir]

That's certainly a stellarshot! :)

[The_bluester]

Had not looked in on this thread in a while, now all I can hear is Hypnotoad!

Great to see your shot on the SV site AC.

[Andy01]

Thanks Malcom, Paul & Suavi!
Yes it's a testament to the manufacturer that this image came out pretty well, more or less straight off the plane and out of the box :)
So far very happy & really looking forward to a winter season of widefield imaging with my new toy.
Thanks for your kind words everyone :)