Antennae

[codemonkey]

Ended up putting less time into this than I thought I would, but I'm reasonably happy with it so I may call it a day and move onto something else.

5.4hrs total integration, used drizzled 2x2 for the RGB which I hadn't done before. Luminance frames were only 144s.

Full res is available on astrobin (http://www.astrobin.com/248686/None/); high res viewing recommended, the small one attached here doesn't show off the resolution very well.

Edit: Added new image revision.

[codemonkey]

And for reference, this is my previous attempt on the Antennae.

[Shiraz]

wow, that's super good Lee. The resolution is just stunning.

seeing something this good is a great way to start the day - thanks.

[rustigsmed]

excellent work Lee.
I really am loving the core resolution and colouring.

cheers

russ

[Atmos]

Really well done Lee, the galaxy is very nicely resolved :)

[codemonkey]

Thanks very much Ray, Russell and Colin! I'm fairly happy with it.

I forgot to mention; constructive criticism is also appreciated.

[Shiraz]

well it needs more data then. :lol:

Star colours could maybe be a bit less magenta if you add more colour info? The star skirts seem a bit varied in colour, not sure why - registration needs to accept larger objects maybe?

[Retrograde]

Very, very nice Lee - loved the high-res version!

[codemonkey]

haha thanks Ray. You can never have too much data!

[codemonkey]

Thanks Pete!

[Paul Haese]

I really like the detail on this image. Not pushed too hard and the streams are well seen. The hook in the lower stream can just be made out and I think many images of this target don't show that extra bit of stream. The star colours could use some work.

[marc4darkskies]

Impressive resolution Lee! A lovely shot! :thumbsup: Your seeing must have been pretty good!

I've been trying this myself and I can't catch a break with seeing down here ... for 2 months!

Cheers, Marcus

[Placidus]

Very well done Lee. The sharpness of the bright detail is especially good.

[Rex]

That is an absolute cracker Lee! Exceptional resolution and nice colour.

[RickS]

Lovely result, Lee, just lose the purple stars :lol:

[codemonkey]

Thanks Ray. I don't remember seeing that last part when I responded previously, so I'll address that now.

Seeing/guiding was terrible for the RGB data, with FWHM in the 3's. I would normally discard all of that but I decided to try it anyway and was reasonably happy with the results.... except for the stars.

I'll definitely go back and see what I can do in terms of registration / integration and see if I can easily fix it up there, otherwise it might take some effort.



Thanks Paul! Yep, 100% agree on the stars.



Thanks Marcus! Seeing was good, some of the best I've had I think. Many of the luminance subs had FWHM of ~1.7, but the RGB was total junk.

Seeing last night was totally crap as well... maybe your poor seeing has found its way to QLD!



Thanks mate :-)



Thanks Rex!



You mean they're not meant to be purple? But they looked so pretty :lol:

Thanks Rick, and yep, I'll see what I can do about them pesky stars.

[gregbradley]

Very nice Lee. Love the tight small stars and colour you've gotten in the galaxy.

Nice one.

Greg.

[codemonkey]

Thanks Greg! :)

[gvanhau]

The little image looks pretty....but to small..
For some reason I can not see the image at astrobin.

Geert

[codemonkey]

Thanks Geert. I'm not sure why you can't view it at Astrobin, the link is still valid. Perhaps the site was having transitory issues when you tried to look at it. It's working fine for me right now.

[codemonkey]

Ok, finally got around to reprocessing this one. I had planned to get new RGB as the data was dodgy, but I've decided to move onto other things.

I think this is an improvement on noise levels, colour and stars, although the stars still aren't great due to dodgy RGB.

New version attached to original post, full res on Astrobin (http://www.astrobin.com/248686/C/).

[Atmos]

That is really nice Lee :)
Question though, there are a lot of grey stars, is that due to not having the colour depth (RGB data) or something else?

[Slawomir]

I really like the new revision Lee. A definite improvement over the previous versions - colours are much nicer than Version A and stretching histogram further (on top of a few other Jedi mind tricks in PI) resulted in a beautiful photograph.

[codemonkey]

Cheers mate! There's a couple of things at play there.

#1 I used a mask to push the vibrance/saturation on the galaxy and did this much more heavily on the galaxy than I did on the stars/background.

#2 The RGB data isn't nice... the star shapes between red and blue in particular are very different. For some reason, even with good guiding I've found now that I seem to get very high eccentricity when binning 2x2 and I think that, combined with less than great seeing/tracking on this, it screwed up my stars. I had a lot of magenta stars, and to combat this I took the lazy way out: whilst protecting the galaxy with a mask, I simply desaturated magenta.



Thanks Suavi :-) I overdid noise reduction in the second version, and in the first I did none. This one I think I got a good balance there and it enabled me to push the data a bit more to bring out the tidal tails a bit more.

[strongmanmike]

Hey the latest one looks great Lee, love the bright colourful detail in the ball bag (just turn it 90deg to the left :P), the antennae are showing really nicely too.

Well done and good on you for persevering :thumbsup:

Mike

[codemonkey]

Thanks Mike! I saw that version on another monitor and it had some nasty med/low frequency blotching from the noise reduction, so I had another pass at that. Exacerbated some halos on the bigger stars, but eh, good enough now I think.

lol @ the composition comment. I'd originally planned to have it 90deg clockwise from the current version, but my wife convinced me that it was better this way. In the end, I came to agree, as is usually the case whenever the wife argues a point ;)

[strongmanmike]

Even through a scope visually it looks like a scrotum :lol:

[codemonkey]

hahah. I think my wife even made a similar comment when she first saw this image.

[RickS]

Nice repro, Lee!



Have you tried turning your "Ibex" upside down, Mike?

[Geoff45]

Great picture Lee. The detail is superb. It's actually quite a bright object, so 5 plus hours is probably enough to get the essesntial details.
Geoff

[strongmanmike]

:rofl:..just saw this comment Rick :rofl: no I didn't but heck you're right..:eyepop:..they look Italian!

[codemonkey]

Thanks Geoff, appreciate it. There's some weird artefacts around the larger stars and even between stars and background galaxies as a result of the noise reduction, but I can't be bothered reprocessing it again, so I'll just have to call it done... for now.



Bollocks, bollocks everywhere... :lol: