Radio Galaxy

[Peter Ward]

The colour data on this one was fuzz-ball city....making some pretty weird star-shapes in places.....but I pressed on anyway and grabbed what I could.
( after having got some pretty tidy luminance data the night before)

Of course.... just when you need some more data to tidy things up....the clouds roll in again....:doh:

The link is here (http://www.atscope.com.au/BRO/gallery374.html)

Hope you enjoy the view!

[rustigsmed]

Snap! Great resolution, small stars and from LP Sydney I'm guessing.

[RobF]

Supernova still visible too just next to brighter star.
Nice image!

[Stevec35]

Wow - exceptionally good. The mind boggles as to what that scope will deliver when you have a series of good clear nights.

Steve

[Atmos]

Very nice results even with relatively limited data so far :) Wonder how many faint fuzzies can be picked up with a few more hours of luminance!

[Peter Ward]

Thanks...looking outside..might get some more data tonight :prey:



Thank you indeed Steve. I think the scope really purrs with 3 arcsec seeing (or better...I wish :lol: )



It is indeed :) Very red.....there was bugger-all signal in the blue and green channels



Yes. :( It's true. I image from a light polluted backyard. Not impossible...but it feels so much better when I stop head-butting the observatory wall :lol:

[codemonkey]

Very nice, Peter. Have to be happy with that. I'd be calling it done and moving onto the next target myself, but then I'm easily distracted ;-)

[alpal]

Stop it Peter,
you're making me feel embarrassed about the pics I've taken.:)
Seriously though - heaps of detail.
Some more hours will bring out the halo even better.

cheers
Allan

[Peter Ward]

Ah...grasshopper...seeking perfection is an illusion that can lead to great happiness.

But my current clouded/moon glow/gigawatt light-glow/fuzz-ball/cold-front-seeing/playing field mini-sun-light sky is reason for great sadness....

BTW interested punters can look at my (currently very sad) sky, in almost real-time here

http://www.atscope.com.au/BRO/SkyCam/SkyCam.html

The camera is currently on night mode. It will show it's the year 1970 when I have
a power drop-out (frequent of late) or looks noisy at night when I switch it back to "auto" (Point Grey have been absolutely pathetic in addressing that problem)...but it does a reasonable job of showing me what my observatory sky looks like...even if I'm on foreign shores

[h0ughy]

wow for a crud image Peter its a pearler!!

[Slawomir]

So sharp...you have awesome scope for sure Peter!

[Peter Ward]

Thanks....but my intention was not to promote the 'scope, just the images
it churns out :thumbsup:



Crud??? Well maybe not *that* bad :)

[multiweb]

:eyepop: Wow! That's fantastic already Peter. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:



Sheesh... :rolleyes: What a tough customer! :lol: I can see a sucker hole at 5 o'clock... oh wait, is that the moon in it? :P

[Peter Ward]

Thanks Marc..... well at least my front lawn is looking great! :rain:

[Ross G]

A very good looking photo Peter, especially coming from Sydney's dirty skies.

Amazing sharpness!

Ross.

[Peter Ward]

Thank you Ross.

Rather than give a glib reply, I think this is worth a few more words for the many of us who don't have rural estates or want to drive for a few hours toward dark skies with a smaller rig.

Deep-Sky is indeed possible from urban skies. You just have to work a lot harder and the nice thing is, your imaging system's resolution is totally unaffected by light pollution.

And if you choose to work in narrow band the problem goes away, street-lights, full-moon and all!

But for "true colour" the hard parts are exposure times (2-4x longer for the same S/N) and gradients ( PixInsight's tool is a marvel to behold). Sure I'd prefer a sublime dark site...but good luck with cleaning filters, changing focal reducers or entire optical systems, etc....

Worse case for me when things go wrong (and they do!) is it's all a few metres away rather than a few hours.

Pivotal to an "urban system" are maximising signal and reducing the noise.
In a nutshell: large and as perfect optics as the budget will allow, excellent tracking, high QE/low noise camera, long well-calibrated subs. Of course if you have all of the former and a dark site...well, Valhalla!

I have tried using DSLR's...pretty nice ones too...but their intrinsic noise simply will not cut it for me in urban skies.

Deep sky from the 'burbs"? A good 'scope and cooled CCD can/will produce the goods.. the linked image you kindly commented on says it all.

[Ryderscope]

That's a very nice Centaurus A Peter. You have managed to keep the fuzz balls under control for sure. Thanks for sharing.
R