omega in the void

[Peter Ward]

Not much to say really.

FSQ106. KAF16803 and a pretty good mount,
all under a pretty ordinary ..but thankfully clear!.....sky.


The link is here (http://www.atscope.com.au/BRO/gallery475.html)

(you might have to hit "CTRL - " a few times to fit the image into your browser screen )

[Atmos]

Even with its large image scale it does a pretty good job at resolving star colours in the cluster.
Out of curiosity, how much exposure went into it?

There is a fair bit of dust around the bright blue star at 1:30 and half way out and the 16803+FSQ is a killer setup for detecting faint things :)
Here is a reference (https://www.astrobin.com/full/347740/0/)

[gregbradley]

Overall very nice but the star colours seem a tad off. A bit of excess green perhaps? Leftover light pollution?

Greg.

[Andy01]

Morning peter, nice image which certainly presents us with a sense of the scale of the object in space. :thumbsup:
The red stars registration though is a tad off, particularly at the bottom - might be worth a quick revisit?
Well resolved details there too :D

[Peter Ward]

There is a lesson to be learnt here...don't have too much red and put up a hastily processed data set....will revise soon !

[Peter Ward]

Ta Col..I've now tidied up the data a bit....same url.

I think it was Steve Crouch who first highlighted/captured dust near Omega Cent :thumbsup:.

This is only an hour in RGB hence no dust, plus absurdly faint does not mix with urban sky glow gradients. ..

I really only grabbed this for fun (MaxIm sequenced the filters and guiding flawlessly) ... you really only need a white cane and Labrador for guiding at 500mm or so :D

[Atmos]

Background is looking nicer :thumbsup:

I initially captured it with 5x300s with a DSLR but it was under reasonably dark skies so there is the difference :P Might be time to go portable!

[spiezzy]

hi Pete
sorry but I am struggling to see the issues with your image I think it looks fantastic but maybe my eyes are not trained enough poor old Omega looks very lonely in that void LOL but there are 2 galaxies to the top of the image and 1 at around 4 o'clock at the bottom
well done
cheers Pete

[Paul Haese]

Certainly a dramatic field of view. Always a lovely object. Not sure if you could get all the IFN in the area. Might be an interesting mission.

[Ryderscope]

What a lovely rendition of an old favourite. I wouldn’t have thought of displaying Omega C in such a wide field but it works well. I am now concerned about these wonderful FSQ106 images that abound as I can feel myself being drawn to another purchase :D

[leon]

Hi Peter I am not an expert on these things by any stretch of the imagination, however, I reckon it is brilliant. ;)

I don't see what the other experts see, and just see something that is awesome for any human to capture.

Dont get me wrong, I loved imaging when I was doing it some time ago, and if i captured something like this i would be over the Moon so to speak.

So any small colour issue is not an issue for me :shrug:

It is just amazing what we, well not me, but what you guys image and show us the end result.

Love it.

Leon :thumbsup:

[alpal]

Hi Peter,
Nice shot and -
I spy with my little eye, quite a few faint galaxies in there.
Well done.

cheers
Allan

[Peter Ward]

Rather than take up bandwidth, my thanks to one and all, for your critiques and feedback.

Due it's rather wide field and ever increasing light pollution, I'm not convinced the FSQ106 has much of a place in my imaging ensemble at present.

I like the FSQ/16803 FOV, and as Paul suggested, teasing out the IFN from the 'burb's might a be cool project, but not high on my hit list for now...:thumbsup:

[JA]

What a wonderful Image. It really give you that sense of the vastness of space. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

Best
JA

[leon]

Peter I expected a rather different response.
You produce this stuff, so i expect an answer, please make the effort rather than a overall expiation to those who do not know about Imaging.
Leon

Leon

[LewisM]

I might be seeing things, but the entire upper half (left, right, and to some extent, centre) of the image has elongation to the star shapes - tilt? The reds/ deeper oranges look a little bloated to some extent too.

Otherwise, I do like it, especially the faint fuzzies.

[Stevec35]

Only minor criticism I would make is you can't see the patches of dust. It's also a bit over sharpened IMHO. Top class image otherwise though.

Cheers

Steve

[Peter Ward]

OK Ok :lol:

The image was a LRGB sequence, 45:45:45:50 minutes. I used MaxImCCD for the capture which allows both unattended guiding and filter changes.

The STX16803 camera self-guides, plus the guide chip is mechanically coupled to the imaging chip, hence guiding is perfect 99% of the time.

I always calibrate using skyflats and dark frames. Each sub-frame image was aligned with MaxImCCD and median combined.

I like to use MaxIm's Digital development processing (DDP) to grey-scale out the data...it is also here where the DDP kernal filter causes a mild sharpening side-effect (but NO de-con or unsharp masking was applied)

The unprocessed image is quite sharp, however some further crunching of the data does also occur when you downsize a 4K file to HD format.

I combine the scaled and aligned RGB images in Maxim, and save the (aligned) luminance data for combining in photoshop as a luminance layer.
Usually a 50% blend.

I give a final colour balance and curve tweak in Photoshop, the drop the image into Pixinsight and use their dynamic background extraction tool to remove any gradients.

Back again into photoshop, with some more brightness and colour tweaks, plus downsize the data for uploading as a .jpg file.

Yes, there is a little elongation in the stars upper left and right of frame!

The FSQ has a less than perfect focuser which has little slop and can show on a 16803 chip. I could have got the FLI atlas focuser out of it's box...but meh...so what there is a teeny bit of elongation ? :P

There you go Leon!
Hope that helps.

[leon]

Thank You

Leon