Big, high and steady vs Small, low and less steady :-)

[strongmanmike]

The Chart 32 team recently released an absolutely amaaaazing image of NGC 1433 in Horologium :eyepop:...so having recently shot this galaxy myself in what I would consider pretty good Aussie conditions ie. 600m ASL, ~1.5"-2.2" seeing 10kms from the edge of a 390,000 pop city... well, you know me :D...I thought, hey, why not do one of those side by sides everyone loves me doing :love: :lol: to see what I managed to capture in comparison :D

Clearly, I want darker skies, 3X the aperture, 4X the altitude and sub arc sec seeing :rolleyes:....:sadeyes: but hey, still, I can see lots of what they captured...so, I'll take it :thumbsup: Sheesh!! how much is in the background of that big baby!..it's bloody well Hubble like :eyepop:

Chart32 Comparison (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/164918567/original)

Bit of fun ;)

Mike

[Placidus]

Aye, we can dream of an image like that on the right, the 'answer in the back of the book', but skilled mortals living in Oz can between clouds produce something bloody impressive all the same.

[RickS]

Nice comparo, Mike. It's good to have something to aspire to :thumbsup:

[Atmos]

Hours is the one on the right right ;)

[clive milne]

Mike.. it's a creditable effort.

However, you most definitely need more emoticons in your description. (I'm lost without them)

[Slawomir]

A fair bit of decon and sharpening and the gap could be bridged :thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

He, he, wouldn't we all like our very own CHART32 :prey: :thumbsup:

Decon?...DECON?? Who said that?! :eyepop:...no worms on me!

You get bit by an emoticon in the past did ya Clive? :shrug: :sadeyes: :lol:

Mike

[Ryderscope]

These are very humble aspirations I think :D Not too much to ask for at all.

[strongmanmike]

Exactly...crowd funding? :P

[Bassnut]

Again, I cant tell the diff. Who the hell would use a 32" "corrected" anything?. Mustve been crook to start with.

[Shiraz]

well, that's pretty darn good Mike - everything is obviously there, just a little fuzzed by the atmosphere - very impressive.

Hopefully the CHART32 guys say things along the lines of "if only we had 5x the aperture and no atmosphere..." That would be fair.

[codemonkey]

Good effort, Mike! Nothing like putting your own efforts side by side with pro stuff to make your--very good--results look average. At least your stars aren't green :D



Nothing wrong with a little bit of decon applied well :p

[strongmanmike]

I agree both our scopes were lemons until they got corrected...like HST :D





He he cheers Ray and Lee, yeah, it's fun to see what you are getting (or not getting) in comparison to great scopes at great locations...well I think it's fun anyway :). I don't care that it makes my image look soft and blurry :lol: helps me see what features I have actually captured, that Hubbly scope is a reasonable reference too ;)



Agreed...and I (and I would assume Chart32 too) used it here even :whistle:...but ya canni tell, can ya?...that's the secret ;)

Mike

[cometcatcher]

90% of the image for 1% of the price (at a guess) sounds good to me.

What if you used adaptive optics? Would that narrow the gap some more?

[strongmanmike]

Not sure, possibly?..but looking at various images out there taken with similar sized scopes or even slightly bigger and usually with longer focal lengths, under similar conditions and that use AO devices in the image train... there appears to be no obvious difference when I compare :shrug:...until of course you get to images taken with scopes at the good sites with genuinely and consistently good seeing, like Cerro Tololo, Mt Lemmon, Sierra Remote or Namibia etc. Your site/seeing is by far the main factor for upping the ante in the resolution department and not aperture or focal length, followed (a fair way behind) by getting enough exposure at fine image scales to handle, properly executed, deconvolution well :thumbsup:

Mike

[Flugel88]

Just for the sake of interest and comparison my attempt at NGC 1433
Seeing all above 3.0" at sea level F8 14inch RC.
Note a ridiculous amount of decon in there :sadeyes:

I really love the colours of your version Mike i just couldn't get it right with the little RGB i had and vignetting. You have captured lots more of the dusty parts too and i notice you have a core and i have a blowout :lol:

[strongmanmike]

Nah that's pretty good Mike, when did you take it, I don't recall you posting it..?
Hard to make a critical comparison because that is a small file you have posted and hard sharpening not withstanding, the general spacial resolution within the details looks pretty similar to mine. To get closer to Chart 32 we need to move our gear to Freeling Heights in the Flinders Ranges..... at least! It's only a modest 859m ASL but a critical testing regime, showed seeing was slightly better than Siding Spring :)....of course sharing a scope at any of the observatory mountain sites in Chile would be better though :thumbsup:

Mike

[Atmos]

I'll have to see what I can get with a straw at 79m ASL and more light pollution than you can poke a stick at :P

[strongmanmike]

The light pollution will reduce the sky contrast and make it harder to reveal the faint features but it won't affect your ability to delineate the fine features spatially (if you manage to reveal them that is :P)...the seeing will do that ;)

Mike

[Atmos]

10,000x5s subs over several nights may get me somewhere :P Not sure my MacBook Pro will be impressed stacking 330gb of images though ;)

[Fabiomax]

The image is beautiful and gets along well even in comparison to that of the team. What I know is the different treatment of color, from what may depend?
Cheers,
Fabiomax