NGC 3576 The Ibex Nebula

[strongmanmike]

After grabbing the Ha the other day, I managed to collect the SII and OIII on Tuesday night and this is a fairly traditional and original style emission line filter palette, with no RGB.

As mentioned already I had some good seeing for this data collection so that's always good :)

With those prominent horns of nebulosity that sweep back over the main bright central "head", this nebula has always looked like the head of a magnificent Ibex to me :)

Capture details are under the image:

NGC 3576 The Ibex Nebula (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/163255272/original)

100% Crop (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/163266792/original)

Mike

[IanP]

Geeeeezzzzz Mike,
She is holding a fish (without a head) up-side-down ..
Never seen zat stuff before ..... WOW !!!!

[Rex]

Awesome detail Mike, Lovin the colours. Interesting take it's likeness to an Ibex. As Ian says, it looks like she is holding a large fish by the tail. Really nice image mate.

[Placidus]

Awesome. As with the H-alpha only version, magnificent contrast in the detail, without it looking over-sharpened. Stars looking beautiful, with proper narrowband colours, and nicely processed.

Soon as I clicked on your terrestrial ibex, saw the horns in the sky.

[Atmos]

Brilliant! :thumbsup: So much detail and it does not look over sharpened, no signs of worms either ;)

[Retrograde]

Beautiful image Mike. Those 'Ibex' horns are quite unique.

[multiweb]

Very fluo colours. Pretty cool. :thumbsup: Surprised you got some details with the seeing of late.

[gregbradley]

I'm getting you one of those really bright Hawaiian shirts for your birthday!
Great detail, crazy colour!
Greg:eyepop:

[marc4darkskies]

Where are my sunnies??! ........... Aaaah .... that's better! :cool:

Seriously, a great image Mike and very striking - excellent! The only nit-pick would be that I'd tone down (desat) the blue / violet at the base of the horns - it's distracting and somewhat out of proportion to the nicely balanced colours in the rest of the image.

Cheers, Marcus

[rustigsmed]

some sweet details to be had in there.
nice.

[strongmanmike]

Cheers boy's :thumbsup:...yeeees, it is colourful :face:
This is arguably (close to) the true colour palette for narrowband emission line images - see Richard Crisp's site, the pioneer of "Wavelength Ordered Emission Line" imaging in amateur ranks. Of course, we all interpret this stuff slightly differently too..aaand who knows, I may tweak it some yet :)

Marcus... :bashcomp: that was the bit I liked :lol:

Greg, Love One! :D...my favourite shirt like that is a bit worn out now too :thumbsup:

Mike

[topheart]

Hi Mike,

An interesting - unique rendition/interpretation. Sharp.

I am going to have to get my head around the colour though. I have never been a fan of Crispy's stuff.

Cheers,
Tim

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Timmy

Well, it isn't exactly a Crisp palette but certainly more like some of the earlier Hubble palettes than more modern amateur interpretations :)

Having said that and in the light of day, I think I will give it a tweak when I get home :confuse3::thumbsup:

Mike

[billdan]

Don't change it too much Mike, I think it looks great, it has that neon look about it.

[RickS]

Very striking, Mr Mikey :thumbsup: I actually prefer the detail in the Ha but the colour version has an abundance of chutzpah.

Cheers,
Rick.

[strongmanmike]

Ok Bill I didn't do too much, just reduced the magenta bias and electric blue around the tornado in the centre a little :thumbsup:

Apart form the contribution form the two other filters in the final SIIHaOIII, when I blink the two Rick there is really no difference in the level of actual details :shrug: the B&W nature of the Ha does look more contrasty of course :thumbsup:

Mike

[astronobob]

Well, thats a rather awesome rendition Mike, but I cant see a fish, Lol.
Anywho, compared to other images recently, this is not as bright as, quess because of the selected signal you have chose to capture - with that said, your results show up very much betterra the low half of image where them bright spots of nebulosity patches are, & quite interestingly resolved which leave to ponder further on them !
Dig the colour palette also Mike, top show and grouse image :thumbsup:

[alpal]

Hi Mike,
another masterpiece.
Great colours & you've even got some of that dark nebula above
that so many imagers don't capture.
Well done.

cheers
Allan

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Guys :thumbsup:

I think a lot of people open an image, take a quick look, form a first visual impression and move on, that's it, which is fine of course, t'is a free World...but if you take the time to really look at an image there is often more that comes through. Apart from the pleasing level of details showing as a result of the better than average seeing on hand, what I am most pleased about with this image is that it very clearly shows the varied distribution of the three emission lines. Look around the image for a while and some complex variations become evident, you can see red (SII), Green (Ha) and Blue(OIII) mixing all over the image, there are nuanced OIII blues spread here and there with the Ha and OIII mixing to form a glowing turquoise colour in places, the SII and Ha mix in places to form a lovely mustard green, the Ibex jaw area is completely mixed with the three emissions forming an intricate mosaic of colours. Many other images of this nebula simply don't show this, so while they may look more pleasing to some eyes from an aesthetic stand point, they often don't show the full scene with these three emission lines :)

Mike

[topheart]

Hi Mike,
Thanks......yes, I can appreciate what you are saying here.
Cheers,
Tim

[Slawomir]

Totally agree with you Mike. For example, my recent interpretation of this region does not show colours nearly as well as yours. As for noticing intricacies, well, it often takes many nights to collect data and then many more hours to process it, but I am afraid majority will spend only a few seconds briefly looking at it thus missing the essence of a message recorded in a space photo.

[Placidus]

Very poetically and aptly put, Mike. Agree totally.

The approach that you'tr advocating and achieving allows one to then go on to think about the physics of what is going on. The greener bits show where the bulk stuff is, the blue bits show where the hardest ultraviolet ionization and sometimes shock energy might be, and the red bits show where, in addition, more processed, old-star stuff is. If we try to make the whole image look a uniform magenta-red, as if it were a 1960's film shot, we miss out on the subtleties you are showing.

Best,
MBJ

[gregbradley]

I like the repro. Gee you really did get some nice fine detail there.

Greg.

[marc4darkskies]

I like what you've done Mike - a definite improvement! Especially with respect to the background cast.

My favourite word when looking at images is "nuance". This doesn't mean loud and obnoxious colour, it means relatively subtle colouring and smooth transitions between colour and tone while still making an image "pop". It means rendering all the tonal information in the data. If I don't see nuance, I move on. As you'd know as well, even the most monochromatic images can have great nuance in tone. A nicely nuanced image requires skill and experience.

This image is nuanced. :)

[codemonkey]

Well it's certainly not conservative, I'll give you that. At first I thought the highlights were blown, but on closer inspection you've pushed it just shy of saturation point.

Not the sort of palette I'd have chosen... but... I like it, and you're right, it really does accentuate the makeup of the target. My NB images tend to duotone more often than not, so I don't get that kind of depth that you have here. Well done!

[Ryderscope]

Beautiful Mike, you have a great imagination with your animal comparisons. Makes for good fun as well.

[strongmanmike]

:lol:...cheers guys, glad you all had a good look and I enjoyed all your (nuanced ;)) replies :thumbsup:

It's great to share stuff with you all and shoot the breeze about this awesome but sometimes craaaazy hobby of ours :)

Mike

[Andy01]

Bold interpretation Mike - I love the exquisite detail, havn't seen that object so clearly before, very nice capture and proessing.
The colour palette on the other hand .... well I'm not so much a fan I'm afraid, probably just me but imo it's way to ott and garish and I really don't like seeing magenta stars when they're so easy to remove, but as others have said, anything goes in NB!
That said, it's an amazingly clear image, really lets you know the standard of detail that can be attained by someone who knows what they're doing!

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Andy, glad you liked..:question:..part of it :lol: :thumbsup:

Well, although I have not always taken this exact approach...truth be known that in this case, this colour palette is in fact close to what using these three filters "should" produce and reveal. It shows the distribution of the three emissions Ha(Green) OIII(Blue) and SII(Red) in relative intensities as and where they should be. It is the purely aesthetic-artistic types (like you :)) that have skewed the processing playing field such that tri-colour narrowband wavelength ordered emission line images now tend to have essentially just a bi-colour dimentionality to them which is then usually tweaked further to have all nature of main colour based on the processors whim :painting:. This is perfectly fine to do of course and I have done it myself even at times :)... but.. such an approach means the image no longer shows where the three emissions are within the nebula any more :shrug: - thus using the extra filter was basically a waste of time then. The magenta stars are also the natural product of the SIIHaOIII ordered palette and while I remove most of it (and could remove it all), I often leave some magenta in the stars because, well, I actually like the look :)

All fair in love and war ;)

Mike

[Geoff45]

Just gobsmacking Mike. Such intricate detail that you can explore for a looonnng time. Colour is nicely psychedelic without being overwhelming.
Geoff

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Geoff, glad the ott and gare didn't blow your eyeballs into the back of your head :P

Hoping you managed to get some SPSP data to post :prey:

Mike

[Geoff45]

I got a couple of good starts but I'll need to get a bit more data, hopefully at this coming new moon.

[strongmanmike]

Look forward to it :)

[Rod771]

Hey Mike! .... Nice image, funky colours!

Were you aware that someone posted your pic on Instagram?? :question:

[strongmanmike]

Huh! No, I wasn't ...over 1000 likes of ott garishness :lol:

Cheers Roddles :thumbsup:

Mike

[Rod771]

Yeah, that really get up my nose!! :mad2: I know we should probably expect it at some stage as we're posting our pics on various forums/sites but at least these people could credit the photograph/copyright owner!!

I found one of Ricks pics on an Instagram account that claimed all pics were from NASA! :shrug: I left a comment pointing out who owned the picture.

[strongmanmike]

Yeah, be nice if people doing this would include an image credit but oh well, no biggy, as long as they are not profiting form it or claiming or implying it is their work :)

Mike

[AG Hybrid]

Outstanding. How long did post processing take for this object?

[strongmanmike]

Hi Adrian, glad you like it :thumbsup: Actually the post processing wasn't too bad on this one, the data was pretty good and as is often the case with my setup, especially when the seeing is good, I didn't have to throw a single sub from three nights :D...and this always helps. To simplify it, I did a version with DDP and stretch and a deconed version, of each data set and blend them in layers carefully (no wiggly bright worms or dotty detail!!!) and then once I have good SII Ha and OIII stacks, it is basically an RGB combine.

Mike

[Stevec35]

Nicely done Mike. Never seen it called the Ibex before but it's very obvious when you look at the image.

Cheers

Steve

[Shiraz]

It has been interesting watching this image arrive - the final result is excellent.
It is a very complex region and your image teases out a lot of the detail, particularly in the bright regions. Nice work

[strongmanmike]

Thanks and yeah, always looked like an Ibex to me :)



He he yeah Ray, I like to share the experience sometimes :)...gets lonely out under the stars.. with only my beer glass to talk to :P



Err?.apart from the colours :whistle: :P I tried to keep it as natural looking as possible, with minimal sharpening and not flatten the highlights, always easier when the seeing cooperates too :thumbsup:

Mike

[Ross G]

A great looking photo Mike.

I love the detail and composition.

So sharp.

Ross.

[APO_Team]

Hi Michael !

Surprising colors for SHO !! It's like a "purple stars rain" ;)
Good job for the shooting !

Tom

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Tom...and yeah, call me crazy but as long as they don't have "halos"... for some reason I kinda like slightly magenta stars in some narrowband images?... :)

Mike

[Bassnut]

Flourescent!. DM would love this, I hope you submitted it.

[strongmanmike]

:lol:...Yeeer riiight :rolleyes:

Cheers Freddles :thumbsup:

[gvanhau]

I like the colors you got on this one. Far better than an attempt I made on it some years ago.

Geert

[strongmanmike]

Wha?...:eyepop: :lol: you sure?..?...:party:

Thanks Geert :thumbsup: