Queenslander!

[Andy01]

Can't help but think this looks like a map of Queensland!

What can I say, you can take the boy out of Queensland, but ... yada, yada, yada! (Go the Maroons!) :lol:

BBW 56 - Not too many images of this large molecular cloud structure with ionization front. It's an interesting target that I visited previously.
Last time I only used HaS2N2, but on this occasion I was determined to capture some O3.
It's there - just dim - 9 hrs Bin 2x2 has revealed it's presence here (seen in blue).

BBW56 is one of 400 objects catalogued by Brand, Blitz and Wouterloot. The catalogue established in 1986 was based on a study to understand the outer galaxy rotation curve from the Southern Hemisphere.
As Brand, Blitz and Wouterloot researched the southern sky they catalogue various objects. Many of these objects are lesser known perhaps due to being extremely faint.

BBW56 is a complex nebula comprising of emission and dusty reflection nebulosity. The presented image is a small area of a much larger nebula structure residing in the constellation Puppis. (Jason Jennings)

Big thanks to my Buddy Paul who captured the Ha with Voyager, from his dark site while my gear was on holiday there. :thanx:
Paul also captured some RGB stars for me with his own gear, which I've masked here with the HA from my gear, to allow the best of both worlds - tiny stars with natural colours. :D

Tis Here on Astrobin (https://www.astrobin.com/full/de64er/0/)

[strongmanmike]

Great result Andy, such a cool looking mystical object this one too and the collaborative capturing and combining has worked a treat, a very pleasing to the eye golden look :thumbsup:

Sure does look like QLD too :)

Mike

[ChrisV]

Interesting target. Excellent, beautifully captured and processed. But is that a hard border on the bottom ...

[Placidus]

Very fine. Collaboration makes sense. The HaRGB stars worked a treat.

[gregbradley]

A terrific image Andy and well done for capturing this unusual object.

It does look like Qld.

Greg.

[Andy01]

Cheers Mike! I was raised in Gladstone, Central Qld, then worked half my career in Brisbane - so it's a tribute of sorts. Thanks for the good vibes :D





Lol, maybe - at least unlike WA it's still attached to the mainland! :lol:





Cheers M&T, I came up with an entirely new technique to mask the RGB stars - probably needs further refinement, but worked out ok. :)





Many thanks Greg, pareidolia rules again! :thumbsup:

[Peter Ward]

Narrow band imaging not withstanding, I have long thought that deep sky images should capture the colours of nature. Ansell Adams, surprisingly worked with colour film for almost as long as he used black and white, but while he photographed vast fields of yellow blooms or red rocks bathed setting sunlight, he never found the need to shift the colour of chlorophyll to yellow or blue.

BBW56 is dominated by red H-alpha light. Yet it is shown here in golden tones. It’s a great image, but the colour assignment so arbitrary that it reminds me of 60’s Pop Art, rather than Astrophotography.

Perhaps to better express my view on this: Marilyn Monroe stunning visage did not need Andy Warhol to posterise her portrait, but that Andy was not interested in landscapes :) Pop Art treatment is hardly verboten, and if it floats your boat, then good for you.

There are many cool aspects to this rendering, but I would have been curious to discover what deep, dim and real colours might have lurked in this skyscape.

[matlud]

A great BBW56 Andy -a very interesting object and some lovely processing! Glad to see you picked up some of the OIII, it is super faint 👍 Was the OIII at the dark site as well?

Cheers,
Mat

[Ryderscope]

Yep, definitely looks like a map of Queensland to be sure. I can see that much thought has gone into the composition and choice of colour palette and it makes for a spectacular and engaging result :thumbsup:

[Startrek]

Andy,
Lovely image with stunning detail
Big workload too
Well done !!
Map of QLD hmm... yep a chubby one after Xmas dinner
I prefer the Matterhorn in Switzerland
Cheers
Martin

[JA]

Andy that's a wonderful and unique image. Well done :thumbsup:

One thing when I saw it I didn't immediately get Queensland, but rather in the right hand 2/3rds of your image, saw Mt Everest - the SW face near the Hillary Step, with a dark orange-brownish ridge line, orange snow and dark coloured exposed rock below that ... Very cool.

Great Image

Best
JA

[Bart]

Very nice Andy. Beautiful colors, superbly blended, lovely stars. :thumbsup:

[alan meehan]

Andy thankyou for showing us a piece of the universe i have not seen before Lovely

[Andy01]

Thanks Matthew, Rodney, Martin, John, Bart & Alan - appreciate the nice feedback and your taking the time to comment.


Matthew- the O3 was gathered from the 'burbs at bin 2x2.



Martin- you get a Gold Star for the 'Chubby Qld after Christmas Dinner ' remark :lol:


Everest, Matterhorn - it certainly does resemble a mountain as well :D

[Andy01]

Peter thanks for your feedback - perhaps you too were channelling Ansel Adams when you chose the 'natural' colour palette for this image? (https://yaffa-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/yaffadsp/images/dmImage/StandardImage/sn-3032-1_winner_cosmic-inferno--peter-ward.jpg);) (https://yaffa-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/yaffadsp/images/dmImage/StandardImage/sn-3032-1_winner_cosmic-inferno--peter-ward.jpg)
Mike Sidonio has produced a lovely, 'natural' HaRGB image (https://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/167144402) of BBW56.

However, for Narrowband imaging it appears you mey be unfamiliar with the elemental composition of this object.

See Phillipe's image from Chile (https://www.astrobin.com/n9dp5z/) or Matthew Ludgate's (https://www.astrobin.com/zjlatd/) from NZ which clearly show the strong presence of the S2 signal, running almost in parallel with the HA.

Following the traditional HST colour palette, when one assigns Ha to green, O3 to Blue and S2 to red - in this instance you'll get a strong yellow coastline from the overlapping blend of Ha & S2.
ie: Green & Red = Yellow. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Additive_color_mixing_red_and_ green.jpg)
In this instance, the colours were assigned to classic HST palatte, not assigned arbitrarily as you have incorrectly assumed. :shrug: :)
FYI, I've attached the straight HST version of mine, before I tweaked the green to taste with selective colour in PS.

I too enjoy Ansel Adam's work, and Warhol's - as they are both very fine artists working with differing styles, may I suggest the world is big and diverse enough for us to appreciate both. :D

[Emuhead]

Another quality image with stunning colours! Very nice indeed. 9 hours of bin2 Oiii, shows persistence pays off. I'll get that Oiii so help me!! Well it looks great and adds nicely to the overall colour palette.

[Andy01]

Cheers Andrew, appreciate the sentiments. I believe that Phillippe recorded 29hrs of O3, clearly he's a patient fellow! :lol:

[Peter Ward]

I did say from the outset...all bets were off when it comes to NB...plus my RGO image was actually monochrome ....but I rather like
Jason Jennings' rendition (http://cosmicphotos.com/gallery/image.php?fld_image_id=255&fld_album_id=11) for colour accuracy.

I have had a prod at this one myself....and found the h-alpha data swamped SII and OIII....hence despite your and other fine NB examples of this object remain puzzled on the booming SII treatment. I may need to re-visit this space with my newer 3nm filter suite and see whether it revises my view.

Curiously Ansel Adams was never comfortable with film in the day to capture accurate colour and found B&W a more creative medium for his seminal works.

I suspect accurate colour deep sky images, even with all our digital bells and whistles, present similar challenges ;)

[alpal]

Hi Andy and Peter,
an interesting chat about the colours in the final image.
I think if we wanted to be scientific we would post
3 mono B&W images of: Ha, S2 & O3.
Then we could see where the emissions were coming from?
Overall - I really like Andy's image as it does what I look for -
something spectacular to look at.


cheers
Allan

[Peter Ward]

Unfortunately 3 monochrome images don't have much wow factor...and kudos to Andy's rendition for keeping it interesting.

Blending NB data into RGB, to be fair, doesn't respect the light, but a gilt SII edge on a predominately H-alpha wave ....humm.....might be very cool..
and still preserve the overall hues of the vista.

As to whether the relative emissions here would even show that sort of structure :shrug: who knows....

I find that "discovery" process, when it does occasionally happen, to be quite seductive.

[Bassnut]

detailed and subtle Andy, well done!. Watermark is a bit jarring.

[MarkBraithwaite]

Stunning image Andy! Love your bold approach. They just get better and better.

[Addos]

another cracker andy. alot of images on here are like your average hot girl; then yours and 2 or 3 others on this forum are like if gigi hadid walked into the room... :)

love your characterisations of your images too :) always matches very well with what you see, as opposed to the official common names of a lot of nebulas. im still waiting to see the prawn in ic 4628.... :P

well done!

[Andy01]

Fred & Mark many thanks for your kind words!
Fred, fyi the watermark stays as sadly I’ve had unscrupulous types claim my images as theirs & even submitted them to Apod! :screwy:

Adam that’s an amazing (and very funny!) compliment thankyou, very generous of you. :thumbsup:

Truthfully what else is there for us to do when we title these images? Our minds are predisposed to Pareidolia, trying to make sense of what we see and then Reference it to something we recognise. We often see something different in the same object, but once seen it’s usually not forgotten.

Thanks again for a very refreshing interpretation and a welcome step away from the usual technocentric critique! :D

[Benjamin]

Really enjoyed zooming around the image and these towers of gas, especially as you head up to Cape York - so many lovely details!

[Andy01]

Cheers Ben - glad you enjoyed your "Northern Safari" :lol:

[Benjamin]

For a second there I thought I had found the big banana and the big pineapple!