Flight of the Navigator

[Andy01]

Reminiscent of the spacecraft from the 80's classic movie "Flight of the Navigator" the SH2-308 O3 rich Wolf-Rayet super bubble arrives majestically at it's cosmic Hydrogen rich space dock. :D

Most of the data captured using my gear with Voyager - by my good friend "The Bluester" at his rural darksite - my gear enjoyed a long holiday there, and didn't want to come home! :lol:
(Some O3 data also captured here under my LP Bortle 7 skies.)

This target is 4,500 LY distant and has become much more popular nowadays!
When I first imaged it in 2015 mine was on one of only 10 images published online - now there are hundreds more, which is totally cool :cool3: - it's a truly amazing target.

I was keen to revisit it with my new gear and show a little more context including it's surrounds instead of just the bubble itself.

FYI - The nebula was formed about 70,000 years ago by the star EZ Canis Majoris throwing off its outer hydrogen layers, revealing inner layers of heavier elements. Fast stellar winds, blowing at 1,700 km/s (3.8 million mph) from this star, create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of the star's evolution. The hydrogen composing the nebula is ionised by intense ultraviolet radiation.The nebula is approximately 60 light-years across at its widest point.

Hope you enjoy this bicolour HA O3 RGB image here on ASTROBIN (https://www.astrobin.com/full/e1iszj/0/).

C&C welcome as always! :)

[AdamJL]

DEFINITELY an 80s sci fi vibe with this one, Andy
Getting hints of Cocoon as well.

Really lovely shot and excellent composition. There’s a boat load of Ha in that area isn’t there?!
I’m hoping this will be my first target when the mono camera arrives. Thanks for the inspiration

[pkinchington]

Beautifully executed! :thumbsup:

[Startrek]

Andy,
Wow what an image and some serious workload to capture it too
Those Chroma filters certainly have captured the data / detail
Nice reading about this object and a bit of science thrown in as well
Well done indeed
Cheers
Martin

[AdamJL]

By the way, Andy. The RGB shots, was that just for stars? If so, why did you choose 5min subs? And how did you not blow out the stars? :)
I was going to aim for about 60-90 seconds tops per RGB filter, but now you've made me question that.

[Nikolas]

Awesome mate what was the final focal length?

[Placidus]

That's the best shot of the gourd that I've seen. Just love the wider field giving context.

[marc4darkskies]

That's a ripper of an image Andy! Can't fault it... and I looked closely. ;) :D

[gregbradley]

A stunning image Andy, perhaps one of your best - hard to say as you have so many excellent images.

Where did you get the clear skies? Its been cloudy here in Sydney now for several months with perhaps the odd one or two nights that sometimes cloud over later.

This is also one of my most favourite objects and you have done it superbly. I like the extended field of view as that picks up the interesting Ha on the left.

You handled that blue O111 background well. I got a bit confused when my image picked up a lot of that and I wasn't sure if it was a gradient or not.

I'd love to see a landscape orientation version of it. If the angles work out.

Your TOA 130 scope with reducer is very similar to my AP130 and reducer. I thought it would be the ideal instrument for this object and your image shows that. I did a test image of this about a year ago with the CFF 105 F6 and a Riccardi 83mm reducer and QHY600m. It looked stunning but the reducer would have to be distanced properly, corner stars were hideous!
So by the time I would crop out the bad bits I would be back to an equivalent 130mm F4.5 size. I was planning to make it a project this year but weather has intervened.

Greg.

[AdamJL]

There one here. I remember seeing this a while back. Can’t link to it directly but it’s by Kurt Ams
https://www.testar.com.au/pages/your-sky

[Andy01]

Cheers Adam,
With three teenage boys at home Saturday nights are usually Pizza & family movie nights. Looks like this classic from the 80's is due for an appearance! :lol:



Thanks Peter :)




Cheers Martin, never easy to add something new to a popularly imaged target, so had throw the kitchen sink at this one! Thanks for the nice feedback. :D



Hey Adam, in hindsight I could probably cut the RGB exposures back to 4 or even 3 mins - still getting used to imaging at a darksite! My workflow for HaO3 RGB is based on Marco's HERE (https://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=138473)



Cheers Nik - with the reducer it's 691mm. :D



Thanks very much M&T! Much appreciated :thumbsup:



Thanks Sensei Marcus! - Really appreciate you dropping by and your nice feedback! :D



Cheers Greg, indeed this wider field revisit to the Bubble has been on my radar for many years, and it isn't an easy object to process.

I just needed to get the Tak & reducer properly sorted first. :) My QSI 6162 camera's large sensor meant that niggling minor tilt & spacing issues have progressively been tweaked with the kind assistance of Diego from Sidereal Trading, and Stefan Buda - almost 100% there now. :D

[JA]

Well Done Andy. Lovely colour and detail.:thumbsup:
It really does look like the Dolphin is coming in for a landing:D

Best
JA

[alpal]

Hi Andy,
that is such a beautiful picture and you put
so many hours into it.
I think it deserves to be an APOD. :thumbsup:



cheers
Allan

[AdamJL]

Brilliant, thanks for the link! Very handy (is the dark site the same one in your recent video where you tested Voyager out?)

[Andy01]

Thanks JA, I think we can get ‘locked in’ to traditional framing of some popular targets,
so it’s nice to try something new that is well received. :D



Many thanks Allan for your warm comments, much appreciated! As to Apod?
I’ll send it in, but who knows, been a while between drinks there... :lol:



Hey Adam, yep - same site, looking to create something permanent there now. :thumbsup:

[DJT]

A wonderful image, Andy
Enjoying the framing and everything else about it

Top job!

[strongmanmike]

Fabulous looking image that Andy and great framing, very well done indeed :thumbsup: Seriously, it's gotta be one of the most photogenic and coolest looking objects in the sky, even basic images of it look ok because it is just so intriguing and 3D, great versions, like this, just look plain awesome! :)

Good to hear you are going remote too, dark skies are a blessing and make lots more objects viable targets and processing easier :thumbsup:

Mike

[markas]

Hi Andy,

Splendid:thumbsup::thumbsup:
I think it's one of your very best - and there's a lot to choose from!
Mark

[Peter Ward]

Very tidy indeed.

Not sure about the neon palette :question:

but the beautifully rendered stars and filigree details are very pretty. :thumbsup:

[Bart]

Very lovely and very aesthetically pleasing. Beautiful colours and detail. Top stuff. :thumbsup:

Flight of the Navigator happens to be one of my favourite movies. :D

[Andy01]

Many thanks DJT - much appreciated! :D





Cheers Mike - appreciate the feedback! :D Mind you when imaging something as amazing as this, it's important to try & get it right! :lol:
Yes can't wait for the next step, really over the suburban backyard obsy now. :)





Cheers MArk - kind of you to say so. :thumbsup:




Thanks Peter - but I like neon, think Blade Runner here :lol:





Hey Bart, thanks for dropping by, appreciate the feedback & glad you liked the movie too! :D

[topheart]

Wow!
Top shelf Andy!
Great framing and colour and detail!

Cheers,
Tim

[Emuhead]

The framing & palette is other worldly. Inspiring stuff!

[The_bluester]

Thought I would pipe in here (After checking with Andy first) The decision on RGB sub length more less was made by me by default while I was testing stuff for Andy.

The intent was to get the background comfortably off the noise floor but have few saturated pixels to preserve star colours, trying to fit the dynamic range of the camera best to the absolute range the sky gave. We applied the same logic to the NB data as well.

In the end at the time used, the minimum and median pixel values are each a couple of hundred ADC above a comparable dark frame and around 3000 pixels (Less than 0.2% of the frame) were saturated so basically only the very centers of the brightest stars would saturate and throw colours out of whack. We might have gotten away with slightly shorter subs too and get even those away from saturation but clear sky was too hard to come by to toss existing data so Andy pushed on at the same sub length. Some shorter subs threw calibration warnings in Astro Pixel Processor about excessive numbers of pixels clipping to zero, which I assumed to mean the subs were not long enough to get the background above the noise floor.

I have been applying the same logic to my ASI2600's of taking test subs to work out how long I can go before an arbitrary number of pixels saturate and going with that, to try to get the best star colours out of those cams too.

[AdamJL]

Very interesting, Paul. Thanks for the write-up!

I had thought that all you were doing (I say "all you were doing" like it's a small thing.. I know it's not!) was stripping out the stars via Starnet or StarXterminator and then layering the star image on the bi-colour.
If that's the case, why does the noise floor matter? All you'd want are the stars? They won't be anywhere near the noise floor.
Total noob here, so forgive my ignorance with these things.

[The_bluester]

You probably could do that but this was rooted in my workflow where I tend to build a good LRGB image and then layer the NB over that, rather than build a really nice bicolour or tricolour narrowband image and then lay in RGB stars. I try to make an RGB or LRGB image that I would be happy with as a stand alone before adding the NB.

Andy's comment elsewhere in this thread suggests he processed this one in the same way I do, building the RGB image and then layering in the NB.

[AdamJL]

Terrific. Thanks again, Paul (and sorry for the thread hijack, Andy!)

[LKD]

Superb image so much detail to behold

[vlazg]

Very nice Andy, interesting field and well composed.I wish I wasn’t restricted to late May until early September, missing out on subjects like this.:thumbsup:

[Andy01]

Cheers Tim, Andrew, LKD & George - really appreciate your nice feedback! :thumbsup:



No probs, we all learn more from each other! :D

[Emuhead]

IOTD! Congrats!

[Bassnut]

wow, that's exceptional Andy, one of the best ive seen. The astrobin pic at native res on a large 4k monitor is gobsmacking!!

[Andy01]

Thanks Andrew, it's hard to please the Astrobin folk - must have done something right! ;)



Cheers Fred, thanks for dropping in and the nice feedback - delighted to hear that you enjoyed the image! :D

[Ryderscope]

Well done on the IOTD Andy. Well deserved.