A Colourful Bubble

[marc4darkskies]

<Sigh> Weather here continues to suck! This image was taken over 4 clear moonless nights during 2 lunar cycles (!), and then only gathering 8 hours of usable data (seeing, clouds etc) :sadeyes:

In any case, whinging aside, here is NGC 3521 - a "Flocculent" galaxy in Leo. The seeing was average (on a scale of excellent-good-average-fair-poor-hopeless). The image scale has been reduced by 25% to mask some of the artefacts from a relatively small integration time and average seeing. I managed to show off the bright colourful core and the "bubble" easily and the dimmer halo elements also came out reasonably well with some pushing. There are some fainter arcs and streams further out but there's no way I could get sky dark and clear enough to be able to render them.

Exposure details below the image.

75% full scale
Use <Cntrl Minus> to zoom out & <Cntrl Plus> to zoom in

http://www.pbase.com/gailmarc/image/165391993/original

[cometcatcher]

Lovely image Marcus! She's sitting right next to the Moon tonight.

[RickS]

Still a lovely result, Marcus :thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

Thanks Kevin!



Cheers Rick! I'm happy with it.

[Placidus]

Heart-breakingly beautiful. Very special.

[gregbradley]

Love it. One of my favourite galaxies and you've done a superb job. The stars look amazing as well.

Greg.

[billdan]

Great image Marcus, a lot of steam coming off that boiling cauldron

Cheers
Bill

[alpal]

Hi Marcus,
what a wonderful picture you've taken.
That Officina Stellare ProRC 360 is such a premium scope.
I would say that you must be very pleased with the results.
I wish you plenty of better weather to come so that you can put
that scope through it's paces on many targets.

cheers
Allan

[markas]

Splendid result, Marcus!

Mark

[Octane]

I agree with Mike and Trish. Looking at that evokes some pretty deep emotions.

I spent a good five minutes just staring at it.

Mission accomplished.

H

[Peter Ward]

A great result. Wonderful. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Stevec35]

Looks good to me Marcus. A pretty good result for the conditions.

BTW it's "flocculent".

Cheers

Steve

[strongmanmike]

Yes, very nice result even without great conditions (or 22hrs of exposure :lol:) :thumbsup: It's a very cool galaxy, the focculentness makes it I recon? FWIW, it looks good scaled back another 30% actually, that's not a criticism, just looks even better when you can take it all in at once :)

Mike

[marc4darkskies]

Thanks very much indeed M&T!



Cheers Greg! Glad you liked it! Hey, we looked at some property in Bigga a week ago (we're going to move one day in the not too distant future). It was very remote - an hour from Crookwell!



Thanks Bill!



Thanks very much Allan! Very glad you think so! Yep, the OS sings when the conditions are right.



Thanks Mark!



High praise indeed H! Thanks very much!



Cheers Peter! I just checked CFN for the next few days - yep, you guessed it - clear skies leading up to full moon! :shrug:



Thanks Steve! I'll fix my spelling! :)



Thanks Mike! Two words ... Control + Minus ;)

[Atmos]

Fantastic Marcus! Keep coming back to it, love the "fluffy" outer dusty extensions.

[strongmanmike]

Yep that's what I did :computer: :thumbsup:...lot's of people don't bother doing this though...

Mike

[topheart]

Hi Marcus,

That is awe inspiring!

Wonderful!
Cheers,
Tim

[batema]

Beautiful image. I wish you had great seeing conditions.

Mark

[marc4darkskies]

Thanks very much Colin! Glad you like it so much!



Cheers Tim. When you stop and think about what your looking at it is pretty awesome. That's why this is such a great (and sometimes frustrating) hobby!



Me too! Thanks Mark! I'd be just as happy with less cloud though!

[codemonkey]

Very nice! I just discovered this one the other day and was hoping to image it myself, alas I think it's going to be behind a nice big gum tree on my neighbour's property by the time I can get to imaging it.

Even my wife liked this one when she saw it, and she usually rolls her eyes and mutters something about "spirally ****" whenever she sees me looking at galaxies.

[Paul Haese]

Weather considerations aside, this is a nice looking image. I really like the detail Marcus and the colour looks very good. Maybe just a little too much noise in a couple of spots for my personal preference but a nice image all the same. Its been on my list for some time now but I don't think I will ever get it now with the RC being moved into the roll off roof (the target is maybe too low to image it from in there), so I will have to be content with viewing others efforts.

[Andy01]

Wow, that's different - havn't seen that one before!
Looks dreamy - which is to say it's sort of shimmering in and out of focus, like a cinematic focus pull effect - is because of that the seeing conditions?
Terrific bold colours and a great presentation :thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

Thanks Lee! You better be quick, it's pretty close to being gone for the season now anyway.

Glad your wife appreciated my "spirally ****" :lol:



Thanks Paul! Yes, it needed twice the amount of Lum at least - noise control was a a bit of a challenge. Maybe next year! I tamed the noise as much as I dare, but to do too much would lead to unacceptably large smoothness / sharpness differentials between the high and low signal areas. A bit of noise never hurt anyone anyway! :) ;)



One too many beers maybe Andy? :lol: Glad you liked it though! Seeing was Fair on my local scale of Excellent (1.8 arcsec FWHM), Good, Average, Fair, Poor (3.0 arcsec FWHM) and Hopeless (throw subs away)

[marc4darkskies]

I made a couple of subtle adjustments now Paul. See if you notice a difference! :)

[el_draco]

As always... amazing!

[Martin Pugh]

Nice one Marcus.

I think the most striking aspect of this galaxy is the 'light dome' and you've captured it well. The outermost dustlane is very hard to get though.

I did this galaxy using two scopes simultaneously: one here in AUS and my CDK in CA and that outer lane still eluded me.

It is a shame your local weather sucks - you could always relocate it ;)

Good job.

Cheers
Martin

[topheart]

I keep coming back to look at this one Marcus....I think the noise is significantly less now.
Cheers,
Tim

[Slawomir]

A spectacular image Marcus. A clear proof that the 'old school' 11000 sensor rocks when handled skilfully :thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

Thanks very much Rom!



Thanks a lot Martin! Yes, I did check out your gorgeous rendition when looking for reference images. And if the dark skies won't come to me, I'll certainly be going to them - not long now methinks. :)



Much appreciated Tim! I may not be a prolific imager, but it's nice to hear that I hit the mark when I produce one! Glad to hear you noticed the difference in noise level - it was a subtle change.



Thankyou kindly Suavi! Yep the 11000 works well but it would be nice to have a bit more QE and a little less noise!