For a change, something different

[bratislav]

Hi,
as Davind Malin awards drew close last night (my congratulations to all winners, awesome display of astrophotography mastery), and my efforts went all but completely unnoticed, I decided to release two images that I submitted (plus two more).
Those are all northern objects, still visible from Australia, but usually categorized as "too hard" basket because of dispersion, extinction and in general way too little time high enough for a decent exposure.
In my case I have spent two years in Europe where I got involved with testing and installation of a real beast - 1.4m professional Ritchey-Chretien telescope. During acceptance/first light testing we had a few clear nights to test the scope, and also to do some 'nice' (that is non-scientific) astrophotography (but with limited time of course. No megadata, sorry).
Now, pro setup offers many advantages, but few challenges as well. Back illuminated E2V chips are state of the art as far as quantum efficiency goes, but offer truly horrible darks as well as flats. Crystal structure of the substrate and polishing of the back of the chip leave many odd structures which all compound to simply weird looking background. And not everything is easy to substract in software (not to me at least). As this is alt-az-derotator mount, flats taken and lights are all angled to each other, and I simply had no answers. To make things worse, filter set professionals use (UBVRI Johnson-Cousins) have next-to-impossible-to-balance-afterwards inbuilt "feature" that made it extremely difficult work later to get anywhere near 'true' or at least "nice" colors.
But enough winging, here's (appropriately butchered by IIS jpeg limits) images of M27 (Dumbbel), M51 (Whirlpool), M64 (Black Eye) and M57 (Ring nebula closeup). I encourage to compare those with anything resolution wise (except of course Hubble). I mean anything - ESO, Keck, Gemini, etc.

Bratislav

PS not all images were submitted to DMA, just M27 and M51

[xelasnave]

Most impressive.
Although I viewed each image the box did not record my viewings.
Alex

[xelasnave]

Looked at each twice I guess the view counter does not work for me.
Alex

[RB]

The view counter does work but it doesn't update in real time.
It updates in stages.

RB

[bratislav]

Yes, this is a properly calibrated scale (11m focal length, 13.5 micron pixels, 0.253 arcsec per pixel).
We had FWHM reaching nearly half arc second on some subs in red/IR channel for 60 second exposures!

[John K]

Hi Bratislav,

Congrats on the amazing images - outstanding - I guess aperture and seeing will always rule!

Clear skies.

John K.

[Andy01]

Well done Bratislav, those are amazing images produced under extraordinary circumstances! :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Stunners. Thanks for sharing.

Greg.

[bratislav]

I know, I know, never try to compare to Hubble, but it is hard to resist stacking against the benchmark. For the record, image of M57 core was initially processed by Johannes Schedler who extracted most of the detail from the data available. Running between the control room and telescope itself for tweaks and adjustments was shared between Philipp Keller and yours truly.

(this is cheating actually, I reduced Hubble image 3 times for comparison to be meaningful)

PS M57 / Ring is MUCH smaller than Helix. It is roughly 80 by 60 arc seconds, nearly 20 times smaller.

[SimmoW]

Fantastic work Bratislav, and impressive equipment, FWHM and processing! Gawd 11 metres....

[astronobob]

:eyepop: all way over my head, but amazing none-the-less :eyepop:

[Paul Haese]

Those are nice Bratislav. I like the detail in the ring and M51.

[bratislav]

Thanks for all the comments guys. It is nice to have some feedback ;)

[strongmanmike]

All look pretty amazing, resolution wise Brat, must have been an awesome experience :thumbsup:

So, am I missing something, or are we to understand that images taken with multi $million professional observatory installations, located at world class observing sites..are eligible to enter the David Malin Awards...? :question: Sheesh, if you can get the filters and processing right...:eyepop:

Mike

[bratislav]

Mike, the conditions of entry are clear:

9. Entries that combine images from professional observatories, taken by professional astronomers, for purposes other than creating the entry in question (e.g. the Digital Sky Survey), will be disqualified.

So you cannot reuse image that was done for another purpose, or done by a professional astronomer as a part of e.g. study or thesis or somesuch.

But those images were collected, stacked and processed by ME, and have not been used for any other publication, scientific study or anything similar.

I did share them with many of my mates of course, this kind of bragging rights doesn't come too often ;)

[strongmanmike]

Oh yes, I knew that...still makes me laugh though...just get the processing down and you will be untouchable :lol:

Mike

[bratislav]

Sure, I'll keep that in mind when I get involved again in an installation of a meter class scope ... :P

[Atmos]

So next time you should hit something like the core of M8 or the Finger of God in NGC 3372 or even resolve every damned star in the Trapesium in M42 ;)

[Retrograde]

Wow those are impressive. :eyepop:

[bratislav]

Yeah, and a closeup or two of those low flying pigs ;)

In all seriousness, every second of airtime of those behemoths is already double and triple booked by professionals doing something boring like discovering which way this Universe is going to end.
I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time; best I can hope is to be around when there is a downtime of sorts (planned or unplanned), but which leaves the telescope fully functional - which really is highly unlikely.
What I might do is to permanently install planetary camera on one of the unused ports (thing has 4 Nasmyth ports of which two have no derotators and are not of interest -so far- to professionals). It is far more likely to sneak in and get the scope for 5 minutes than to get a free reign to a multimillion dollar scope for a few hours. Pros don't care about nice pictures, but they are well aware of good publicity they generate in public.

So watch this space :whistle:

[Atmos]

I'm surprised that you can even get 5 minutes in with all of the backlog they're permanently under :P

[traveller]

Seriously impressive images Bratislav.
You have every right to compare with HST images.
Bo

[RickS]

Stunning detail, Bratislav!