Two Tiny Tots: NGC 5189 and 3132

[Placidus]

Placidus has pretty good light grasp but is strongly limited by seeing. Best suited to huge faint things. Here we have a crack at the exact opposite, with limited success.

NGC 5189 is a beautiful planetary in Musca, showing strong spiral structure, like water from a rotated garden hose. Length about 3 min arc. Hubble palette. 6 x 1hr subs in each channel. One explanation for the structure is that there is a binary companion, and polar jets are precessing. The whole thing is reminiscent of a sea-horse or a tiny embryonic dragon.

The Eight Burst nebula in Antlia, NGC 3132, is half that size. Very bright. 3 x 30 min subs in each channel. There is an egg-shaped cavity filled with blue OIII emission. The cavity is surrounded by a yellow-green beard, stronger in H-alpha and SII. Within that cavity, one can just make out what appears to be an equatorial ring, seen almost edge-on, dividing the cavity into halves. The general effect is of a microscopic creature such as a paramecium.

Best,
M & T

[lazjen]

Not bad results overall. I'm not sure how much more you could do if you're limited by the seeing.

[Ryderscope]

These tiny PNs are great challenging targets MnT. These two little fellas have been done proud in that there is much detail to be explored and the colour rendition works very well.

[Paul Haese]

I found 5189 to be quite hard to get really sharp without over sharpening it, or making it looked like it has been over sharpened. I like the colour of both sets. It makes you wonder if you would benefit from an AO in your system.

[RickS]

A lovely pair of delicate gems, M&T! The colour is great and they are fascinating objects. Shame about your seeing. We have been spoilt by Hubble pics :)

Cheers,
Rick.

[Retrograde]

Nice Job Mike & Trish.

These are obviously very challenging targets.

[Placidus]

Thanks Chris. The seeing's not the worst in the world - typically about 1.8 to 2.2 sec arc FWHM. Currently it's been very unpredictable, anywhere from 1.5 (rejoice) to 3.5 sec arc (watch movie).



Thanks Rodney. That's encouraging.



Cheers, Paul. I think if we were to start again after a bush fire, we'd investigate AO. Would have been great for the recent lambda centauri shot!



Thanks, Pete.



Thanks muchly, Rick. They are very pretty. The Hubble Eight Burst is magical. Oh to see such things. Perhaps the thing that got me into astronomy (and science in general) as a nipper was that what was in the textbook really proved to be up there, and we could see for ourselves. Almost nothing else that we were taught as kids (eg sport builds character and makes you a man, and I'm doing this for your own good) turned out to be true.

[Slawomir]

Skilfully processed two beautiful gems that I was not aware of at all.
Awesome work Mike and Trish :thumbsup:




We should be grateful then that Hubble is on its way down... :lol:

[Atmos]

Nicely done! I have on a couple of occasions tossed up the idea of attempting the Eight Burst nebula with my baby refractor (compared to your giant scope!) but it is just so small at 670mm ;)

Hubble really has set an unattainable benchmark for us amateurs hehe

[Slawomir]

Solution on a budget: Stick a camera with ICX 834 at the end of your telescope with 670mm fl, that will give you 0.95" pp. Collect sufficient number of subs and drizzle integrate them to increase resolution to less than 0.5"pp. It won't give you the same level of detail as a bigger telescope, but you should still get pleasing results even for small targets :-)

[rustigsmed]

very nice M& T,
good to see you use your FL for some of these PN's they are fantastic and so varied.

cheers

[gregbradley]

Nice shots Mike.

I find my CDK17 is quite sensitive to seeing as well. The Honders though is not particularly nor is it that sensitive to light pollution. That's AP knowhow for you.

Greg.

[codemonkey]

Good stuff guys, a couple of interesting targets. I was tossing up having a crack at these myself, but then figured with my imaging scale I was probably better off sticking with something a bit bigger... and then you post these... saves me the trouble! :)

[Placidus]

Thanks, Suavi. I'd had a crack at the eight burst something like eight years ago, and just got the faintest hint of that equatorial septum or wall or division. It's a bit more obvious this time. Only became aware of the Musca spiral planetary over the last two years or so via images by Rolf Olsen, Geoff Smith, and Paul Haese.



Thanks, Colin. The Eight Burst is very bright, a bit like the Bug in Scorpius, so it's quick to photograph. Might be worth a shot.



Cheers, Russell. The variety is certainly the spice. Fascinating that the same basic underlying mechanism (atmospheric expulsion by hot collapsing post-nuclear core) should, when combined with binary companions, planetary discs, magnetic fields, etc, produce such an extraordinary menagerie.




Hi, Greg. The Honders is an astonishing piece of kit, but in addition, for any given technology above six inches, I believe that the larger the aperture, the more six inch parcels of turbulent air we look through, and the more overlapping rubber-stamp copies of the target we blur together. A six inch refractor, a Barlow, and tiny pixels might be the best instrument for the Eight Burst. Dunno.



Cheers, Lee! Glad to be of service.

Best,
Mike

[strongmanmike]

Two lovely gems guys and yes, seeing those two thin lines across the eight burst is what you want :thumbsup:

Mike

[multiweb]

I like #2 best. Some very cool details in both. :thumbsup:

[Placidus]

Thanks, Mike.



Cheers, Marc.



We've watched the last three nights of crystal clear skies and no wind, but with an essentially full moon staring back at us. Lots of movie watching!

[astronobob]

Nice targets and Images M-T, PN's are becoming popular, thus a little more exciting each new image coming through, these a really very good & inspiring !
Wondering what F/Length you used for these - guessing around the 2meter range ?
Cheers ..

[topheart]

Good captures M+T
Cheers,
Tim

[Placidus]

Thanks muchly, Bob. Focal length is 3454 mm.



Thanks, Tim. Tiny PN's don't have quite the Bang for Buck of the Tarantula, but they're kinda cute, and it's interesting to try to imagine what is going on in their innards.

[astronobob]

Woah - think ill find some slightly bigger first :thanx:

[Shiraz]

very effective images of some small stuff - good going.

What is it with seeing lately - I had one night where it was pushing 5 arcsec at times. Nice and clear but useless.

[Paul Haese]

I find I get back seeing at Clayton when the prevailing wind comes from the north west over the ranges towards me. Mostly this year I have found the seeing to be quite good though.

[Placidus]

Thanks, Ray.

The last clear night here, seeing was a glorious 1.5 sec arc but the moon was a day past full. We had a go at the Bug Nebula, but the faintest stuff was washed out by the moonlight, and the brightest bits were just burned out by too long an exposure. Such is life. :rofl:



We must try making a log of seeing versus wind direction.

[Ross G]

Great captures Mike & Trish.

Two very beautiful objects.

Ross.

[Placidus]

Thanks, Ross!

Missed your reply in the excitement of having a new water tank installed. Room for eighty tonnes of water, and torrential rain expected.

[Placidus]

Ooey-Gooey was a decon worm, with glistening beads that you could see ...

Two things came together to cause me to reprocess this. The first was the magnificent recent post by TopHeart, which made our previous processing look positively blurry. The second was having just taught GoodLook 64 how to deconvolve a starless image.

Here is the Musca Spiral Planetary (about 3.5 min arc tall) after 10 rounds of Richardson-Lucy deconvolution. (Both to avoid magenta halos and to avoid issues with panda eyes around bright stars, stars were removed prior to decon, then replaced using just the H-alpha channel mapped to white).

We were rather delighted to find that the OIII in the nebula, previously a blue blur, resolved itself into a series of six or so parallel interlocking spirals, with largely black in between. The pattern of lumps along these fine blue threads matches the largest and most obvious lumps in the far far sharper Hubble shot (www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1220a/), so we think they're more or less real rather than glistening beaded decon worms.

... All along the railway track, his gizzards were a-splatter, but they didn't waste a bit of him, for now he's peanut butter.

[Atmos]

Which one is Hubble? ;)

Very nice MnT, the new one is certainly an improvement over the first, much sharper. I prefer the reds in topheart's shot but they're both brilliantly resolved!

[topheart]

Hi Mike and Trish,

I love your narrowband NGC5189!

Wow, how do you deconvolve with no stars?? Very snazzy.

I have taken narrowband data on NGC5189 that I haven't had time to look at yet.

Looking at your data, maybe there isn't much more extension of signal around the main body with Ha or O3??

Cheers,
Tim

[Placidus]

Thanks muchly, Colin. I am thinking Tim's shot is LRGB so it will look very different colour-wise.



Hi, Tim,

Thank you!

We produce a starless version, then go back to the original version, measure the point spread function, and use that to deconvolve the starless version.



Looking forward very much to seeing your NB version!

The Hubble shot doesn't seem to show much beyond what we captured - it's just a squillion squillion times sharper. But their field was tight and perhaps they were more interested in showing only the inner helical structure, which I understand to be due to precession of polar jets.

Shots from Alex W, Rolf Olsen, Geoff Smith, Don Goldman, SpiegelTeam, and Paul Haese seem to show much the same extension as yours and ours.

Very best,
Mike and Trish