Aaaand another Eagle - now with 12hrs of data

[codemonkey]

Been running into lots of issues lately, but I managed to cobble this together. 4.9hrs total, with only 1 of those being Ha. The Ha was also poor quality, with only 3/12 images being below 3" fwhm. When things are going well I can get down to about 1.6"

Feedback regarding the processing is very much appreciated.

Full version (http://www.astrobin.com/260551) available on Astrobin.

[Atmos]

Still looks very nice and well handled Lee :)

[Placidus]

Excellent colour and contrast Lee. NB stars are looking good. The image can take a stronger nonlinear stretch (about 50% brighter in the darks works well). That's a good thing.

1.5 sec arc on another day! Oh, such as youths dream of. We rarely do better than 1.8. Sob, whimper (but rarely worse than about 2.4 - Euchareena pretty consistent, just consistently ordinary).

[codemonkey]

Thanks Colin :-)



Thanks mate, appreciate the feedback. I push the shadows some more, and used local histogram equalization to bring out that faint nebulosity a bit more.

I don't seem to get much in the way of mediocre... it's usually either excellent or terrible. I wonder whether I'm not getting the best out of my guiding and turn mediocre into bad...

Anyway, I've updated the original post with new versions. One for those that hate green.

[atalas]

Looks great Lee....nice tight stars,good detail,good edge sharpness and overall a very well balanced imaged:thumbsup:

People might want to artificially pump up brightness in dark areas but you have to keep in mind the lower S/N there and the impact on the overall dynamic range of the image....4.5 hrs really ain't a lot of data for anything but the bright stuff.

[gregbradley]

That's a good image there Lee. Lovely tight stars and sharp. Overall though the image lacks a bit of impact - punch. Perhaps the low exposure is holding back bringing it up a bit more. Is this using the ASI1600?

Greg.

[codemonkey]

Thanks Louie :-) Yeah, I'm always running short on data. In the coming months I'm hoping to get automated in which case I'll be more likely to do longer integrations.



Thanks greg :-) You're 100% right, it was a bit understated. I've updated the images with some better contrast. And some tweaked colour as well.

And yep, this was the ASI1600 -- I've only got that these days, in addition to the ASI174MM which I use as a guide cam.

[Placidus]

I think the slightly brighter version is very fine, Lee.

[Atmos]

Version C is currently my favourite Lee :) I like the brighter nebulosity, doesn't look like it has been black clipped like it does a bit in the D version... I don't mind the green :)

[gregbradley]

Yep that looks great Lee.

Greg.

[RickS]

Nice result, Lee. Like Colin, I like version C better than D.

[multiweb]

The data is really good and the high-res is simply sublime. I like both color renditions. Frame it and off to the poolroom. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Maurice]

Lovely framing & processing Lee.
Version C is my favorite too..
How do you like the ASI1600mm camera?

Cheers
Maurice

[SimmoW]

Lovely Lee, good to see the cam doing so well.

[codemonkey]

Thanks Mike :-)



Thanks Colin :-) I was careful not to clip the data, but yeah, I think the ideal is somewhere in between those two.



Thanks Greg :-)



Thanks Rick :-)



Thanks Marc! I think I'll put some more time into this one so I can smooth it out a bit better with less noise reduction, then hopefully it'll look even better in full res.



Thanks very much Maurice! :-) Doesn't quite have the resolution that your recent (excellent!) work has.

I'm still learning to get the best out of the ASI1600, and I think I still have some spacing issues. So far I'm very happy with the decision to sell my Sony 674 based camera to get the ASI though.



Thanks Simon :-)

I learned a new (to me, looks like everyone else knew it hah) method for processing NB data, as described by Bob Franke (http://bf-astro.com/hubblep.htm). It's the info I was looking for a while ago and I'm happy with the result after applying it to this data. That's available as revision E (http://www.astrobin.com/260551/E/) on astrobin.

[Rex]

Nicely done Lee. Your obviously getting things sorted with your gear which is great to see. Rev E is the best bits of all the other versions put together, great job mate.

[codemonkey]

Thanks very much Rex :-)

I caught another couple of hours of Ha last night. This time in much better seeing, and half of it without the moon up. I'll see how I go, but I'd like to get the total data collected on this in the area 10-15hrs.

[glend]

Looks great Lee. It's getting out of reach for me now but i might have an image soon from my narrowband achro project data, nothing like 10 hours though.

[Somnium]

Really nice Lee, well resolved

[strongmanmike]

Yeah, everyone is posting Eagles at the moment Lee, huh? :lol: but I don't mind and this a good one, with a slightly different take on the colour, lovely, the stars look nice and clean too :)

Mike

[codemonkey]

Thanks Glen :-) It's into prime imaging position for me now. I'm always late to the party.

Looking forward to seeing what you can pull out with an achro.

Oh, and I'm not sure if I'll get into the 10-15 range yet. I always manage to convince myself to use less. I'm up to 7.3hrs now.



Thanks Aidan



Thanks Mike :-) I've got a new version now on Astrobin, and the colour is closing in on the norm. Currently more yellow/green than typical, but still closer to normal.

[Retrograde]

Didn't get a chance to check out the hi-res versions earlier...wow.
Fantastic sharpness & great contrast. I like version & C & the most recent 2 versions where you can see more of the surrounding nebulosity :thumbsup:

[codemonkey]

Thanks Pete :-) I'm pretty happy with the luminance, but I still can't get anything I'm truly happy with for NB colour. Still a newbie at that.

If anyone has some suggestions re the colour, or can point me in the direction of some good tutorials on that I'd appreciate it.

I'm now up to 12hrs of data, making it my longest integration to date. Haven't reprocessed with that extra data yet and thinking I'll capture some more over the next few nights.

[Shiraz]

looks really good Lee - plenty of detail and colour is beautiful. Top job.

[codemonkey]

Thanks Ray :-)

This is now the longest integration I've done; a total of exactly 12hrs.

[Atmos]

That is looking serious good Lee, not quite the conventional palette (lack of yellow in the pillars) bit the detail is very good indeed!

[codemonkey]

Thanks Colin :-) I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of detail I was able to pull out of this data. I normally discard anything over 3" FWHM, and probably should be more discerning for NB data (on a good night I can get down to 1.6" for narrowband).

With this data I included everything below 4" and had a lot of nights with poor seeing, so the FWHM of all the integrated data is about 3.3" -- worse than the stuff I throw away normally.

I did deconvolution as usual, but also did some selective sharpening which I don't normally do.

[Stevec35]

Looks good Lee although the palette is a little unusual. I would suggest reducing the brightness of the bright areas a bit though as the pillars area seems slightly washed out.

Cheers

Steve

[codemonkey]

Thanks Steve, appreciate the feedback :-)

The most common narrowband M16s that I can find look almost bi-colour, which I actively tried to avoid here, so it's a bit different, but (I hope) shows more colour depth than is frequently seen.

After I ran HDR wavelets on the image I actually pushed that center region a touch to make it a bit more "washed out" around the pillars as I think that's a bit more natural for this target. There's still way more contrast / detail than a true linear stretch of that data, so I'm happy with the compromise at the moment.

[Slawomir]

A lovely image Lee.

It is great to see your mount-telescope-camera combo is performing very well :thumbsup:

[codemonkey]

Thanks Suavi :-) Still got plenty of issues, but that seems the norm to me these days. I need to stop buying new kit, always takes far too long to get everything playing nicely together!

[Atmos]

Better than a rusting away EQ6 ;)

[codemonkey]

lol true