Another lagoon

[codemonkey]

Well, it's that time of year again and when you have a new set of NB filters and want to give them a test drive, why not trusty old M8?

I've solved the mechanical issues that were giving rise to collimation shift, but now have some tilt again... sigh. Good news is, you can't really see the tilt so much with so few/small stars!

I was also graced with some good seeing for some of this, which has been very rare this year... could certainly do with some more of that.

Big one here:

https://www.astrobin.com/full/bre26x

[Atmos]

Wonderful resolution Lee, you were really blessed with some good seeing!

How are you finding the new narrowband filters? I’ve not heard many reports in regards to them.

[codemonkey]

Thanks Colin :-)

The new filters are pretty good. O does suffer from halos, but I think I can live with them. The brightest star in this FOV is 7 Sagittarii which is mag 5.37 and it showed a halo... but it also basically disappeared in the full SHO image without any effort on my part.

[gregbradley]

A fabulous image. How did you get your stars so small? They look amazing.

Terrific resolution on the hour glass nebula.

Another stunner.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Yeah great work Lee, a cool coloured version with plenty of lovely detail :thumbsup:

Mike

[Atmos]

Still has me thinking Chroma if I do go a set of 2". Some of their earlier batches did have some halos but they've worked hard after user feed back and managed to eliminate with dual AR coatings or something. Antila is CONSIDERABLY cheaper though and for the price that's a pretty minor halo :)

They definitely resolve well though!

[pkinchington]

Lovely depth and smooth transitions. What set up (telescope and camera) did you use Codemonkey?.
Cheers Kanga

[Peter Ward]

Gee...that has exceptional resolution.

Beautifully tight stars, filigree details and smooth data.

I'd be hard pushed to find a better Narrow Band Lagoon on the web.

Top-shelf stuff. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

Getting tired of seeing the same objects imaged over, and over ..... and over! ....
EXCEPT when they have the exquisite detail and colours of your beautiful rendition Lee! Very nicely done! :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Andy01]

Yes, another great result Lee! :thumbsup:
Framed this way it's like being at Sydney Aquarium, looking into one of the giant fish tanks as the diaphinous jellyfish like core of the Lagoon swims gracefully by. :D
Will be interesting to see how the new filters perform on dimmer objects. :question:

[multiweb]

:eyepop: That's an awesome M8 Lee. New benchmark. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Paul Haese]

That is a lovely image Lee. Sharp detail and processed beautifully. Well done.

[strongmanmike]

Having another look at this excellent image Lee :)...have to say, once again you have clearly demonstrated the level of misguided cynicism of the occasionally stated belief, that medium focal length with small pixels, produces vanilla images and only "long"..? focal length can hit the mark, you da man ;)

Love yer work dude :thumbsup:

Mike

[Craig_]

Absolutely stunning rendition of M8.

[Ryderscope]

Sharp, lots of detail and plenty to like with this image. Great work :thumbsup:

[codemonkey]

Thanks very much Greg :-) The trick with the stars is to use narrowband stars (typically H) for the luminance and RGB for the chrominance.




Yeah, if you have the money Chroma/Astrodon are definitely the way to go. I've now done an actual comparison with my Astronomik O filter and the Astronomik is much better than the Antlia with regard to halo. Unfortunately the use of an OAG and desire to do LRGB and NB on the same night (automated) mean I can't continue to use the Astronomik, so that's out... I may end up getting an Astrodon 3nm O filter down the line, but I'm very happy with the Antlia S and H.



Thanks Kanga :) The scope used was the TS ONTC 8" F4.5 newtonian, with an odd Paracorr that brings it to F5. Camera was an ASI 183mm Pro.



Thanks very much Peter



haha, thanks Marcus :D That's the sad thing about "common" subjects, you can do a great job but most of the time nobody cares because it's just another image of that same old target. Glad you like this one though :-)



Thanks Andy! My wife also thought it looked like an aquarium. I'm sold on the Antlia S and H, I expect they'll work fine on targets dim or bright, but the O halos will be annoying.



Thanks Marc! :D



Thanks very much Paul :-)



Thanks Mike! :D Yeah, I don't get the fascination with long focal length scopes. It's all about sampling... 0.5"/px is 0.5"/px, doesn't matter if you're 3m or 1m. Of course you need at least a little bit of aperture to go with it, but other than that...

I had been planning on building a bigger (12" or so) newt to put on the Mesu, but I'm just gonna keep the 8" newt... when you do the math, it's actually pretty hard to beat. I could go a bit longer focal length and move to F4, but I honestly have more than enough difficulty with the F5, I do not want to get a faster scope that requires so much fiddling to get good stars.

Maybe one day as a retirement present I'lll get myself a CDK or something (mostly because I really hate fiddling with newts) but until then...



Thanks Craig!



Thanks very much Rodney :D

[marc4darkskies]

Agreed! I look at all of them closely though because I'm always interested to see if the photographer has created something special that stands out from the crowd (including my humble efforts). Your image does that in spades!

I dunno though, sometimes I actually think people here overlook objects that are not so familiar and only single out commonly imaged objects for comment because they have a familiar frame of reference on which to pass critique. :question:

[multiweb]

I reckon you should feel free to image whatever you like regardless of what people say or think is a popular target, or "done to death", or M42, or NGC6188, or NGC3372 , etc...

We now see threads like "oh no another ..." or "sorry another ..." and emojis in the comments like :rolleyes: or :zzz2:

C'mon... who comes up with these rules. :lol: All you're going to do is make newcomers uncomfortable imaging standard stuff and seasoned imagers have performance anxiety if someone points out one corner pixel out of whack in their M42 taken with a supa doopa rig :P

Of course M8 doesn't fit in that bag so it doesn't count. Not imaging it is simply unaustralian.

Ok, I'll go back and image Eta and M8 for the nth time. :)

[strongmanmike]

Yeah I know, or like pointing out a perceived minor flaw in less than 1% of the image area, or some cryptic issue with the colour of a tiny portion of a nebula in a 16 square degree image :lol:

:thumbsup:

[multiweb]

:lol: I rest my case.