Ruby Baby...

[Peter Ward]

Oh no! More M83 :)

Knowing that M83 is sometimes referred to as the "Ruby Galaxy"...I decided to grab few hours of h-alpha only data (the seeing was appalling)

The result, to my surprise, clearly shows many of the h-alpha regions that are breathtakingly revealed in the Hubble image of this southern Belle.

With mixed success, I also layered this into my LRGB data...which nuked the colour balance..but with a little tinkering gave an interesting, but hardly accurate colour result.

Link to the results is here (http://www.atscope.com.au/BRO/gallery468.html)

[Benjamin]

Oh wow. Not sure I care much about colour fidelity. Beautiful image.

[leon]

Nothing wrong with that Peter beautiful in fact.

Leon

[Placidus]

That's wonderful Peter. Just the H-alpha image alone is great

The mouse-over way of showing the H-alpha on top of natural colour is very clever.

[Peter Ward]

Very kind. I do like roll-over images...seamlessly flipping from one state to another...and qantumn jokes aside... lets you explore the changes in a whimsical way.





Thanks guys...it's easy to understand why its a popular object, but it's hard to do really well. I suspect it will end up being a multi-year project for yours truly.

[Andy01]

The original is superb, even more so considering it's taken from suburbia. :thumbsup:

Interesting as it is, I'm not sure the Ha is really adding much to the story of M83 though - the red nebulosity present in the original is quite pronounced already, and the overall colour suffers with the Ha RGB blend.

NGC 300 for example, on the other hand seems to benefit from adding in the Ha, so maybe it's just a galaxy by galaxy thing?

A wonderful image regardless. :)

[Peter Ward]

Thanks for your input Andy. I'm not happy with the data for other reasons, not the least of which was variable seeing over the period when I captured the RGB.
Vastly different FWHM's made the star colours rather ordinary.

The H-alpha data proved useful in the end, as I since found when suitably masked, it enhanced the Ha regions without affecting the overall colour.
....but the RGB needs re-visiting, unlikely anytime soon with the Moon now well past 1st quarter. Gotta love this pursuit eh? :lol:

[multiweb]

Nice one. The Ha certainly gives it a nice layer. :thumbsup:

[Peter Ward]

Thanks Marc. I went back to the stack files, used some of PI's masking, wavelets and other white-man magic, masked in the Ha and got the colour looking not too shabby....

Same URL (http://www.atscope.com.au/BRO/gallery468.html)...re-pro at the bottom of the page.

Now seriously has some sparkle and looks like the pinwheel during the opening credits of "Rake" :D

[alpal]

Hi Peter ,
that looks fantastic.
It looks much better with the mouse over.
You have top equipment & processing abilities.


cheers
Allan

[gregbradley]

Fantastic. That's about as good as it gets with that one.

Greg.

[Peter Ward]

Thanks Greg...I ended up tossing quite a few frames that weren't up to par.
and only stacked frames with a high quality setting (MaxImCCD has a nice rejection routine based on various parameters).

The Alluna also has a great focal length for galaxies in general, but as you know all too well, seeing is paramount to getting a good result.




Thanks Allan. Let's see...Capture, calibration and image quality sifting with MaxImCCD, Image registration and stack with Pixinsight, which also handled the gradient removal. RGB combination in MaxIm, with L and Ha layered in Photoshop....which works for me....but begs the question:

....what does everyone else use to capture and assemble their data with?
and why? (always interested to hear about software that is the right tool for the job)

[topheart]

Hi Peter,
Thanks for posting this. It is very interesting what Ha does to the image.
Great work!
Cheers,
Tim

[alpal]

Peter,
I don't think you'd be interested in what I do as I'm
not even in the same league but I probably do what most others do:


Check all LRGBHa data immediately with Maxim DL while waiting for the next sub frame.
Stack with Deep Sky Stacker.
Stretch in NASA FITS Liberator.
Process with Photoshop & Fitswork 4.


I think these days that Pixinsight is needed to be up with the game!
I don't have it.



cheers
Allan

[Slawomir]

Beautiful image Peter. The final version is stunning :thumbsup:

[Peter Ward]

I'll admit learning Pixinsight is about as much fun as bamboo under the fingernails. But its gradient removal, masked stretching, image registration and stacking is
simply excellent....

I'm sure there is much more cool stuff PI can do...but after becoming adept at just those four it's taking some time for my fingernails to recover :)....

The 230 Euro price tag is not overly punitive, particularly given subsequent (and frequent) free updates, plus you can run it on Win. Mac and Linux platforms.

BTW I really detest Adobe's subscription policy, and expect there will be a time when I tell them where to shove it...

[alpal]

Thanks Peter,
It would be good to discuss PixInsight further - maybe in the
Astrophotography and Imaging Equipment and Discussion section?
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=35


I do like NASA FITS Liberator as it's working in 32 bits instead of 16.
I think there's a small advantage in that as with PixInsight using 32 bits.
It also uses mathematics to stretch which simplifies it so much
& gives outstanding results - just like PixInsight uses maths
to process many functions.


However - Photoshop allows you to do almost anything.
This is one of the most amazing ideas I found:
http://bf-astro.com/backgndrepair.htm

quote:
it should be possible improve the background with little or no loss of faint detail.


Also -
without Louie's videos I would have given up long ago:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ5b6pFHBGe66vsuSaXb-0A
or here:
http://www.atalas.net/

Those videos get amateur astronomers into the starting line.

cheers
Allan