IC 1274 BigToe in Rhaspberry (HOO) and Hubble (SHO) palettes

[Placidus]

We think this is gorgeous in HOO palette: IC 1274, or BigToe in H-alpha (mapped to red) and OIII (mapped to cyan). As before, a mosaic with about 80% panel overlap because our FOV isn't quite big enough for the whole thing.

To 7 hours of H-alpha We've added 10 hours of OIII. Stars are mapped to white.

Big one here (https://photos.smugmug.com/Category/Star-Forming-Regions/i-dBm96G8/0/31351d78/O/IC%201274%20BigToe%20Red%20Ha%207%2 0hrs%20Cyan%20OIII%2010%20hrs.jpg)

Thanks to Rick Stevenson for pointing out the little planetary nebula at 6 o'clock. Entering the coordinates into Simbad, we find it is M1-41. The DSS image they show is a close match in morphology: the weird shape of the PN seems real.

Aspen CG16M with 3nM Astrodon filters on 20 inch PlaneWave. North up, field approximately 0.5 degrees wide, original image 0.55 sec arc/pixel. Moon 0-3 days.

Update:

We've now added a further 9 hrs of SII, and remapped to Hubble SHO. It was difficult to make it look "pretty" because the SII is relatively faint except where it is co-located with H-alpha. Thus the SII needs a lot of stretching, the stars get haloes, and the background gets gritty. But we think we've done a fair job of showing the SII given the difficulty.

We've tried hard to avoid the mortal sin of stretching the OIII and SII to make a pretty picture, and leaving the background a beautiful blue or purple when in fact there is nothing actually up there.

What we see: The SII shows fine shock front detail in the very bright areas, and in the planetary nebula. There also seem to be genuine diffuse clouds of SII far from the action, presumably stuff left over from long disrupted supernova explosions. Just guessing here.

Big one in SHO (https://photos.smugmug.com/Category/Star-Forming-Regions/i-44dgVjp/0/19bf63ad/O/IC%201274%20BigToe%20Ha%207%20OIII% 2010%20SII%209.jpg)

Best,
MnT

[DJT]

Now that’s very nice indeed, MnT.

I can see why the colour grows in you. 👍

[Placidus]

Thanks David! Tonight we're adding SII, so we'll end up with an SHO version, but I'm not sure that the SII is especially real. It is faint and seems exactly co-located with the H-alpha. Perhaps the tiniest bit of the blindingly bright H-alpha leaks through the SII filter.

[Andy01]

Now you're cookin' with gas - that's lovely, really pretty too :)

Now put the Palmolive away in the cupboard before you get tempted to bring it out again :D

[multiweb]

Looks yummy. Very deep colors. Top shelf. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[cometcatcher]

I love this region. So much to play with. Especially that swordfish thing down the bottom. Nice palette. I wonder what the SHO version will look like.

[Placidus]

Thanks Andy! Now where's the Palmolive? Ah! My fingers are soaking in it.



Cheers, Marc!



Hi, Kevin! Processing the SII as we speak. When I first saw the swordfish thing in low res, in "The Night Sky Observer's Guide", I thought it was a giant fluffy quill pen. But now we know it is really an empty prawn shell.

[Placidus]

Update (17 Aug 2018):

We've now added a further 9 hrs of SII, and remapped to Hubble SHO. It was difficult to make it look "pretty" because the SII is relatively faint except where it is co-located with H-alpha. The SII needs a lot of stretching, the stars get haloes, and the background gets gritty. But we think we've done a fair job of showing the SII given the difficulty.

The result looks broadly similar to Martin Pugh's image of the same area (https://www.martinpughastrophotography.spac e/nebulae#/pagem8/), excepting our field of view is much smaller and the resolution correspondingly higher.

We've tried hard to avoid the mortal sin of stretching the OIII and SII to make a pretty picture, and leaving the background a beautiful blue or purple when in fact there is nothing actually up there.

What we see: The SII shows fine shock front detail in the very bright areas, and in the planetary nebula. There also seem to be genuine diffuse clouds of SII far from the action, presumably stuff left over from long disrupted supernova explosions. Just guessing here.

Big one in SHO (https://photos.smugmug.com/Category/Star-Forming-Regions/i-44dgVjp/0/19bf63ad/O/IC%201274%20BigToe%20Ha%207%20OIII% 2010%20SII%209.jpg)

[cometcatcher]

I don't know if it's the extra time or SII but there's more detail in this SHO new one. Love the "Prawn shell".

[Andy01]

Nice one M&T, looks more Opalescent than Palmolive ;) :rofl:

Nice image, well done! :thumbsup:

[Placidus]

Thanks Kevin. It's probably on the edge of polite and plausible sharpening but we don't think we've introduced florid artefacts.




Thanks Andy. We will continue to try to behave ourselves.

[Slawomir]

Another fantastic image M&T. Colours work well together and there is a lot of interesting structures for the eyes to feast on. Well done :thumbsup:

[Stevec35]

A fantastically detailed colour smorgasbord guys! Only minor gripe is that the bright stars are a bit blown out. Don't know if there is anything you could do about that.

Cheers

Steve

[Geoff45]

I really like the intricate detail, but can't really warm to the lime colour of ngc 6559. Gold would look better I think.
Geoff

[Atmos]

A lovely contrasty view with nuances of detail :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

You've got some interesting detail there. That 20 inch really picks up the details.

Greg.

[Placidus]

Thanks Suavi. The little planetary was a most unexpected addition.



Thanks Steve. I think that there is something systematically wrong with our processing that does that. Will give it much thought.



Ta, Geoff. Would love to chat with you one day about what degrees of freedom we have there.



Thanks Colin!



Cheers, Greg. It does seem to be ok at faint detail that might be too gritty with a smaller machine.

Best,
Mike

[multiweb]

Groovy colors. Beautiful. :thumbsup:

[troypiggo]

Can't decide which one I like better - both are great for different reasons. The scale shows details I never realised before. Thanks for sharing.

[Placidus]

Ta mate! :hi:



Thanks muchly Troy. Starting to think that it's worth producing multiple versions of some images - sometimes one to show faint nebular detail in context, and another to show the bright structure, or same idea with an open cluster, one to show the brightest stars like jewels on velvet, another to show it embedded in the milky way. And with narrowband, especially when there's only traces of SII, to produce two versions.

Best,
Mike and Trish.

[RickS]

Hi M&T,

The Hubble palette shows a lot of subtle details not normally seen in RGB or HaRGB. The detail is amazing as usual :thumbsup: Love it :)

Cheers,
Rick.

[Retrograde]

Wow fabulous detail. I like the raspberry too which makes a change from the usual strawberry tones.

[Placidus]

Thanks, Rick. We are gently heartened.




Thanks, Pete! The possibility of a slightly warmer, less liver-and-cryovac beef colour scheme appeals to us.

* * *

Speaking of raspberry, our observatory uses a number of boards designed by me, using now unobtainable AtMega 40 pin DIL microcontrollers. I wanted to make a tiny change to the code for the one that orchestrates the two roof flaps, so they don't crash into each other.

The C compiler used to be free, but now they want $280 a year licence, still needs a lot of assembly language to actually do stuff, and it is a pain in the butt to use or to upload to the device using the AVR ISP and Atmel Studio. Think swinging from a chandelier under a waterfall on top of a ladder in the dark while singing God Save the Queen in E flat minor.

Also, we own the last 10 of these 40 pin DIL chips on the planet, and every single one of them has a particular pair of pins blown to bits ex factory, for our convenience. We dont want to try surface mounting a modern 100 pin chip. We wondered briefly about the Raspberry Pi, but got scared by the word Linux. :scared:

We've just bought an 82 MHz Arduino Due for about the cost of a BLT and avocado sandwich, found that you really can just plug it into your laptop with a USB A-B cable, and start programming it in C++ pretty much instantly for free. No learning curve. It seems (yet to be proven) that it can do 12 bit PWM at blazing speed without having to use assembly language. It can probably also even do quadrature decoding. And we can design our own 4 layer boards with things like motor controllers to just plug physically into the Arduino as a "shield". What fun! No more sitting around the fire on cold and cloudy winter nights wondering what to do.

Best,
Mike (and more cautiously, Trish).