Ngc6726

[Shiraz]

Finally got just enough data to image this beautiful region - been trying for 2 years, but the winter sky has prevented it till recently. Seeing was just good enough and it was a real thrill to get something nice from the new camera. There are some filter reflection issues, but they are fixable and are acceptable for now.

page size http://www.astrobin.com/full/256805/0/
full size http://www.astrobin.com/full/256805/0/?real=&mod=

lum 163x60sec
r 126x60sec
g 45x60sec
b 66x60sec

thanks for looking. Regards Ray

[Atmos]

Very nice Ray, lovely larger galaxy down the bottom and scatterings of tiny ones throughout the field.
The high res version is wonderful to look around :)

[el_draco]

That is a really nice shot!

[Placidus]

Truly excellent, Ray. Stunning. A wide enough FOV to get the globular in the image, but also to see the sharp details of the face-on spiral at the bottom. Great work.

[atalas]

Ray a very beautiful shot of this object:thumbsup:some nice little galaxies in the background as well.....very impressive work.

[gregbradley]

Holy cow I nearly fell off my chair.

That image is drop dead gorgeous.

That is a superb image Ray, the stars are absolutely perfect as well.

My hat is off to you sir.

Now that is a definitive image for this new camera. You should spread that around as an example of what it can do in the right hands.

How long though did it take to process all those images? Is there special software that stacks them all quickly? CCDstack would laugh at me if I tried to stack that many images.

Greg.

[RickS]

A fantastic result, Ray!

Cheers,
Rick.

[DJScotty]

WOW. That is beautiful.
The more I see the ZWO cameras in action, the more I want one...

Absolutely stunning Ray.

Scott

[Paul Haese]

Nice, very nice image. There is so much to like. I really like the star colours, subtle but evident, great detail and not over sharpenned. Resolution in the globular is superb and I really like the whispy detail in the reflection nebula.

[Shiraz]

thanks Colin - appreciated

thanks very much Rom!


thanks for the kind comments M&T. it is good to have a camera with enough real estate to catch a bit of this type of scene.

thanks a lot for the encouragement Louie.

Hi Greg - great comments, thanks. The data handling took a few hours from memory (did not measure though). flat and bias cal in Nebulosity (very fast), alignment, stacking and processing in PixInsight. I have a fairly modern quad core i7 with 16G RAM, which is probably almost a necessary adjunct to this chip - have recently processed a run of almost 1000 ROI subs with no dramas using PI.


thanks very much Rick!


Thank you Scott. Yes, the camera has it's own idiosyncrasies, but it is fundamentally a very capable design - full marks to ZWO for getting to a high standard with their first big DSO camera.


Thanks Paul. as you know, clear sky has been a bit hard to find down this way, so it was pleasing to get enough to produce an image. I didn't do any sharpening - the main feature of this object is the soft cloudiness - appreciate your comment on that

regards Ray.

[TR]

Ray, That is a very fine image. You picked a great target to test your camera on, it has everything in it. Has both high and low signal areas, reflection nebula, with a nice stars everywhere, and great colours. :thumbsup:

Terry

[Flugel88]

Oh that's a lovely shot kinda like an all you can eat buffet so much to take in.
All round image looks smooth and sharp amazing detail for 60sec subs noise looks completely absent :thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Yeah really great shot Ray :thumbsup: I can see the minor reflections you mention but they don't look obtrusive, in fact they look quite nice :) Did the short subs help reduce star size at all? did you dither?

Mike

[vlazg]

Very nice Ray, a great area i my opinion:thumbsup:

[SimmoW]

Thanks for posting Ray, fantastic result! Just took delivery of mine, still need to order my FW and filters though. Great result for 1 min subs.

[multiweb]

Simply superb. The FOV is terrific. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[glend]

Very nice Ray, i like the clarity and detail in getting HH98 to appear so clearly. It is easy to assume its a galaxy, as there are so few of them in the southern sky. Must get back to this object soon.
Gain setting at 139 given that sub length, or less?
Thanks.

[Andy01]

Bam! You left nothing on the table there - VEEEERY nice result :)

[Shiraz]

thanks Terry - yep, it is a great region to image - had fun.

thank you Michael. I was pleased at the relatively low noise - still some of course, but not a lot. 60 sec subs are normal for this camera - makes for a whole lot of data.


thanks Mike. I assume that the short subs helped with the stars, but did not check - the seeing was not great though, just good enough. standard procedure with the current setup is to do a flat/bias cal and dither to take care of everything else (the dark current is negligible and the read noise is almost unbelievable). It is really weird how quickly this camera has become second nature - I really don't think about it any more - 60 second subs already seem quite normal.


Thanks George - yes, it is a great region and I was glad to finally get enough clear sky to image it.


thanks Simon - I am sure that you will enjoy the camera. What filters and wheel are you getting? I am using 1.25 filters and they work OK at f4 (just), but if I was starting from scratch, I think that I would go for 36mm.


thanks Marc - much appreciated


gain was 100 - I think I will leave it at that setting unless there is something really challenging that needs very short subs. I was also happy to see the HH - icing on the cake.


thanks you very much Andy - glad you liked it.

regards Ray

[traveller]

Very nice Ray, well composed and exposed!
Bo

[lazjen]

Very nice image. How dark are your skies?

How much disk space did you use with this? Including your flats, darks and intermediate files? I can see the need to buy hard disks on a frequent basis! :)

Also, it might be time to update your sig again? :)

[codemonkey]

Great shot Ray, but I expect nothing less from you! :p

[Maurice]

That's a lovely result...!
Great work.

regards
Maurice

PS How does the 1600 camera performs when binned....?

[Shiraz]

thanks very much Bo. Glad you liked the composition - it was hard to get this collection of objects into a reasonably nice looking frame and I was a little uncertain of the result - appreciate your comment.


Thanks very much Chris. Skies vary a bit, but I think they are generally around Vmag21/arcsec2. The total disk space needed to get to this image was ~37GB - only use flat and bias, since dark calibration isn't necessary with this camera.


Hi Lee. thanks very much - this is a fun camera eh?


Appreciated Maurice - thanks. I haven't tried it with hardware binning, but understand that it is not the best. There is apparently an on-board bottleneck that limits the bit depth to 10 bits when hardware binned. However, there is a good case for software binning with such low read noise. For example, at gain 50, software binning would yield a 4mP sensor, 7.6 micron pixels, read noise of ~5eRMS, well depth of ~50,000 e and vanishingly small dark current - it would be a very competitive narrow field camera for a larger scope.

[Maurice]

"............ However, there is a good case for software binning with such low read noise. For example, at gain 50, software binning would yield a 4mP sensor, 7.6 micron pixels, read noise of ~5eRMS, well depth of ~50,000 e and vanishingly small dark current - it would be a very competitive narrow field camera for a larger scope."

hmmm....... I was hoping that it would be the case......

thanks
Maurice

[silv]

An illustration for a fairy tale. Romantic like a flower bouquet.

I googled the NGC number and I found this image of a 60 hours! :eyepop: exposure.
http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/NGC6726MPmosaic.html

Although the overall impression is clearer/sharper in that version, I prefer yours actually because of its softness which is like story telling instead of slamming the facts on the table.


The top blue nebula in the shot from 2007 looks more "windy", swirly than yours and I think that doesn't come from missing details due to less exposure. This looks as if the 'storm" there has changed in the past 9 years. What do you think?

[Shiraz]

Thanks Silv. I deliberately tried to convey the softness of the clouds, so appreciate your comments. The image you linked to is a very fine one, but it has been processed to enhance local contrast variations, so it looks a little bit "harder".
I understand that this region is about 500 light years away and it is huge, so I think that it is unlikely that any changes in the structure would be visible over 9 years - unless the gas and dust is changing incredibly rapidly. Regards Ray

[billdan]

Wow that is really smooth Ray, I just compared yours to mine and its chalk and cheese. You have much better resolution and smoothness than mine for roughly the same exposure time. The camera is sure a winner.

Regards
Bill

[Shiraz]

that's very generous Bill. I would not have said the images were "chalk and cheese" different, but the high inherent sensitivity of the mono 1600 is definitely an advantage.

regards ray

[billdan]

I wish someone would make an APS-C sized (24x16mm) version. I would be the first man in the queue to buy one.

[SkyViking]

That's stunning Ray, a really fine image of this beautiful region. The globular makes for a nice contrast too.
I couldn't squeeze the glob into my FOV when I did my version, really wish I had a large FOV sometimes... Thanks for the view :)

[Rod771]

Wow! Stunning result, Ray! Well done! :thumbsup:

[Stevec35]

I'm a bit late in responding Ray. Nothing much to say except - well done sir!
It's a stunning result.

Cheers

Steve

[Shiraz]

thanks very much Rolf. this image is nowhere near as good as yours, but it is the first time I have managed enough data to even get an image at all, so am pleased.


thanks very much Rod!


Hi Steve. thanks for your comment - appreciated.

Regards Ray