Ngc 1097

[codemonkey]

This has been on my list for a while, but I haven't managed to get any significant amount of data on it until this year.

Had some clear nights forecast this week where I set up and the seeing was amazing only for my rain alarm to trigger, leading me to pack up before I even started imaging. Still, I ended up with a couple of good nights for luminance, the integration coming in at roughly 2.0" so I can't complain too much. Colour data was reserved for the junk nights, FWHM in excess of 5" on some of those.

Had hoped for another night tonight but the forecast has changed so it's looking like a no-go.

Not sure I'm happy with the processing yet, but I'm sure I'll receive some useful feedback here before long and find myself redoing it a thousand times ;-)

More capture details here (https://www.astrobin.com/eqo0c5)
Big one here (https://www.astrobin.com/full/eqo0c5)
Full res here (https://www.astrobin.com/full/eqo0c5/0/?real=&mod=)

[Paul Haese]

That's nice Lee. The jets are well seen and colour is excellent. Detail also superb.

[Ryderscope]

Fascinating. Lovely faint outer structures and well composed field.

[strongmanmike]

Gee Lee...that's a really excellent 1097, detail and colour are super :thumbsup: Loved looking around the image, a real galaxy lovers delight :) You are becoming the galaxy king ;)

Mike

[Placidus]

That is an image of exceptional class. Inspirational.

[alpal]

Hi Lee,
that's an excellent picture.
I like the way you've kept the noise in the background -
it let's us see where the noise floor was.
The colours are great and the detail is superb.


cheers
Allan

[codemonkey]

Thanks Paul :-) Yeah, I don't usually push my images very hard in terms of faint detail, I've never been too successful with that, others have brought out the jets a lot better. I'm just happy you can see them at all.



Thanks Rodney!



haha, thanks Mike. I don't know about the galaxy king, but I sure do like 'em. So much so that I've sold off my NB filters and will now focus pretty much exclusively on galaxies.



Thanks very much, Mike :D Have you guys done a colour image of this one? I found some very nice L data of yours, showing off those jets a lot better than I have, but no colour. Would love to see you guys show us how it's really done.



Thanks very much Allan :-) I actually did quite a bit of noise reduction on this, but it led to a lot of artefacts so I diluted it significantly by blending it back with the original. I'd prefer less noise and that's something I may revisit.

[gregbradley]

That's a super 1097 Lee. Fabulous colour and terrific core detail.

Greg.

[Camelopardalis]

That’s a fine 1097 Lee :thumbsup:

Maybe a touch heavy on the deconv for my tastes, but I’m weird ;)

[codemonkey]

Thanks Greg :D



Cheers Dunk! There wasn't much decon on this one, but maybe it's the combo of decon, MMT and AI sharpening that you're not feelin'. I tried to do just a little of each :shrug:

[strongmanmike]

My decon meter is pretty damn sensitive and it hardly quivered, nor did my very recently acquired (courtesy of you) AI/loopy sharpening :screwy: meter :D :lol: :thumbsup:

Mike

[ChrisV]

Lovely detail all the way to the core on your top pick pic

[gregbradley]

What's MMT Lee?

Greg.

[codemonkey]

Thanks Chris!



MMT is MultiscaleMedianTransform which is a general purpose wavelet-based tool in PixInsight. Two of the main things it's used for are sharpening and noise reduction.

Using MMT you can basically increase/decrease the "weight" of different scale features in an image, which effectively enables a kind of ringing-free sharpening if you increase certain (typically small) scale structures. It's also good for noise reduction. It's really easy to overdo it with MMT though so you gotta be careful with it.

I use MMT quite a lot, including for minimizing the impact of dust donuts if I don't have flats and even for extracting large scale structures which make for better modelling when removing gradients.

[Peter Ward]

Sorry...been a bit busy of late and missed this one.

Narrow field with that sort of intrinsic resolution is no easy task.

It's so refreshing to see someone make their instruments sing, rather than plug and play muzak.

What a cracker of an image....my only complaint would be... I'd wish I taken it :)

[Camelopardalis]

If it didn’t send Mike loopy, you’re on solid ground ;) :lol:

What AI sharpening are you using?

[strongmanmike]

:D :thumbsup: :nerd:

[marc4darkskies]

Another superb image Lee! :thumbsup::thumbsup: Resolution and colour is excellent! You do indeed have that equipment of yours singing! Keep them coming!

[gregbradley]

[QUOTE=codemonkey;1451439]Thanks Chris!



MMT is MultiscaleMedianTransform which is a general purpose wavelet-based tool in PixInsight. Two of the main things it's used for are sharpening and noise reduction.

Thanks Lee.

Greg.

[codemonkey]

Thanks very much, Peter :-)



haha. Yeah, I thought I was safe when Mike didn't comment on it :p

I'm using Topaz for both sharpening and noise reduction. Honestly I don't think it did a great job of sharpening on this image, I think it might be too oversampled to work well with Topaz. I only used it sparingly because it was more artefact than sharpening on this one.



Thanks a lot, Marc! :D



No probs Greg, hope it's of some use.

[PeterSEllis]

That's a beautiful shot Lee, you can fell proud of that one.

Cheers
Peter

[Cosmic]

Well done Lee, so much detail. Such a grand result for a 8 inch TS.

[codemonkey]

Thanks very much Peter and Daniel, glad you like it :D

[topheart]

Very very well done!
Cheers,
Tim

[codemonkey]

Thanks Tim! :D

[multiweb]

Another great galaxy shot Lee. You're pumping them out! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Slawomir]

Wow, wow, wow. What a fantastic image Lee :thumbsup: Seeing what you and Mike are producing, makes a very convincing argument for the direction of my future telescope choice. Excellent, really inspirational work Lee.

[codemonkey]

Thanks Marc! Clouds are back here and soon it'll be that time of the month, so it'll probably be a little while before I've got another image, unfortunately. I haven't started on my next target yet... unless I add data to something I captured last season...



Thanks so much, Suavi, that's lovely feedback.

Funnily enough, I've been starting to think about what my setup might look like down the line and I'm not sure I'll stick with what I have forever. Maybe I'm just a masochist, the last big equipment change had me thinking "never again", but how soon we forget...

I'm thinking about something a bit bigger, like a premium RC (CFF?), or maybe a CDK, with a bigger-pixel-camera to suck in more light, riding on a mount with encoders, or maybe a friction drive, or maybe both. This is all many years away though. Until I have the mortgage paid off and can save up the big bucks I think this is a pretty good rig... I am pushing it to its limits though.

[Slawomir]

Im not sure if there is that much room for improvement Lee - I would love one day to be able to compose galaxy images like yours. A nice RC crossed my mind once or twice, but that would require a completely new imaging rig, like you have mentioned. Mortgage out of the way first for me too :thumbsup:, or at least the bulk of it...:)

[codemonkey]

Thanks again Suavi :-)

I think the biggest win from here will be a mount with encoders... at this image scale I think I'm pushing the limits of even a Mach 1. I've found slight tweaks to guiding parameters can have pretty big impacts on image quality now because I'm typically getting a total RMS that's approximately the same as my image scale. That said, I'm aware that I'm well into the zone of diminishing returns.

A bigger scope / camera will just help me get deeper results faster. I'm not actually sure I'll get much more resolution, I think I'm more seeing limited than aperture limited, but I could be wrong there.

[codemonkey]

I used Ray's (where is Ray? I miss his posts) excellent "Astrograph designer broadband" spreadsheet to plug in some numbers, comparing my QHY178m + 8" newt with a 12.5" CDK + 8300... given 5min subs, it would take 23hrs with the QHY+8" to get the same SNR as 13hrs with the CDK + 8300. The CDK + 8300 is at 0.44"/px and the 8" + 178m is 0.5"/px ... that's a pretty compelling argument in favour of the CDK.

[alan meehan]

Lee what a superb image ,nice and sharp and some good colour

[peter_4059]

Another excellent image Lee. I like the way you've presented it, beautiful intricate detail and tasteful, not over the top saturation.

[codemonkey]

Thanks very much Alan and Peter :-)

Yeah, I do tend to push the saturation pretty hard these days, Peter, but this one wasn't really amenable to that... I did try though ;-)