A Hamburger with a Nebula side

[DiscoDuck]

A couple of shots from a trip to the Flinders Ranges in South Australia last weekend: NGC 3628 and NGC 2626.

Taken with a ZWO 294-MM on a GSO RC8 and AP Mach1. About 18 and 9 hours total exposure for the burger and nebula respectively.

A lot of problems processing the Hamburger as that tidal tail is very faint and my flats were undercorrecting slightly - the error being larger than the brightness of the tail!

Astrobin links:
https://www.astrobin.com/full/4ehuk9/B/
https://www.astrobin.com/full/87tkvd/0/

[gregbradley]

Spectacular images Paul.

Greg

[Todo43]

Great images Paul. Love the tidal tail on Hamburger



Your collimation looks great! How did you collimate your scope?

I've just recently started imaging with a 6RC and am struggling to collimate it. Don't have any tools so that's a struggle but I tried on a star last night and got better results than I had.

[Dave882]

Both those images are fantastic! Particularly impressed with the hamburger and the detail you’ve revealed both in the body and tidal stream. Very hard to do well like this especially without dark sky!

[AdamJL]

absolutely outstanding. One day I'd like to drive out there for a month and just image. Such beautiful skies!

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks Greg, Lachlan, David and Adam.

Lachlan: re collimation, I use the "hall of mirrors" technique https://astrojolo.com/gears/ritchey-chretien-rc8-telescope-first-light/ to make the primary and secondary parallel at any point in the procedure. I also have a Glatter laser with a holographic attachment which generates concentric circles to line the primary up with the centre of the tube.

I have not found a good guaranteed technique, but a combo of the straight laser, the holographic laser and the hall of mirrors seems to get close with some iteration, swearing and crossing of fingers! Often never quite clear whether to adjust primary, secondary or the collimation ring I have on the back - not helped by the lack of a centre spot on my secondary. But make small changes and check. The main source of error is the laser not being central in the focus tube, and I try to guesstimate/fix this by using my rotator to spin the laser round and make sure it doesn't move. Or if it does, the centre of its circle is where the focuser is really pointed.

Finish off with a test on a defocused star and maybe a very slight tweak of the mirror to centre everything up.



David - the skies were very dark. Just not great seeing on 2 of the 4 nights and some dodgy flat frames made it harder than it should have been.

[alpal]

Hi Paul,
excellent results.
Well done.


cheers
Allan

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks, Allan.

[strongmanmike]

Both look great Paul :thumbsup:, nicely composed and great colour, very satisfying results I am sure, despite the difficulties you mention, seems you have mitigated and handled the issues very well, viva la Flinders Ranges! :P:thumbsup:

One thing, I'd be interested to know, what sharpening and noise reduction/sharpening software/filters you used to reveal and enhance the details?

Mike

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks Mike.


Noise reduction was using NoiseXTerminator.


Sharpening/detail enhancement was a range of things - BlurXTerminator, high pass filter (in PhotoShop), LocalHistogramEqualisation, etc. Plus the galaxy itself is a stack of fewer images than the surrounds - just cherry picked the lowest FWHM subs.


Viva la Flinders Ranges doesn't have quite the same ring to it as Viva Las Vegas. But then again, I wouldn't want to image from downtown Vegas :-)

[BigK]

The challenges were worth the result. Superb images.

[strongmanmike]

Looks like those two Russ Croman tools are becoming a bit of a prerequisite....;) He makes a reasonable argument on his website for the relative accuracy/level of reality, of his particular neural network/AI methodology. Certainly feels like the "new age" now... or your images will get left behind... :hi: :question:...
Grooooaaan...gotta upgrade the computer and buy the software :rolleyes: :lol:

Mike

[matlud]

Two great images Paul! Got to love dark skies and you revealed some nice detail there 😀

[marc4darkskies]

Very very nice Paul! :thumbsup: Nice work!



Believe that when I see it! :lol: ;) Don't forget to buy either Photoshop :love: or Pixinsight :bashcomp: or both. Full disclosure: I actually had to use PI so I could test out BlurX :rolleyes: :( :help:

[Bassnut]

Excellent Paul, a pleasure to view!.
So Marcus, im so close to wanting Blurexteminator, and natch the awful required PI , just for this, being a PS fan boy like yourself, WHAT DO YOU THINK. Is it worth the expense?.

[marc4darkskies]

I just did an experiment with blurX on a really lousy image of ngc 7424 (poor seeing) I took 7 years ago. I promptly imported the result into PS 😊. Very impressive result so yes it's worth it. The only other thing I use PI for is for annotating images. At least PI is a permanent licence.

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks Baz, Mathew, Marcus and Fred.

Mike re BlurXTerminator and NoiseXTerminator: working in the cyber/ML field myself, I am generally wary of such tools. But I think Russ has done a very honest job of training them specifically (and thoroughly) for decon and noise reduction respectively. There are ways to architect and train neural networks which could result in mechanisms more akin to replacing images with Hubble-inspired data or even creating features not there, but these RC Astro tools seem to be legit IMHO. And, as you say, being taken up broadly, so we don't wanna be left behind!!

And interesting comments re PI!! I use both it and Photoshop, but mainly PI. I find PI more appealing to my way of thinking (I am a mathematician/scientist) - not sure if it is a preference though generally based on familiarty or mindset ... probably a bit of both. And in any case the one off license saves me a fortune compared to my monthly donation to Adobe's bank account :-)

[strongmanmike]

:help:

Feels a bit like 1998 for me,when I thought long and hard about giving in to taking anabolic steroids, the best strongmen were using, even the not so good ones were, they were winning more often, seemed to be stronger (mostly) :question: :shrug: its expensive too....what to do...? Is this what I do it for? Is it cheating?...dunno?...:shrug:....wei rd :help:

Mike

[alpal]

Hi Mike,

I suppose some people would call it cheating.
I often used ideas from Ken Crawford -
in his Digging out the Details video:
http://www.imagingdeepsky.com/Presentations.html

It can certainly make an image more appealing
or show something better than no processing.
I think BlurXTerminator is like having a Ken Crawford plugin
for your Photoshop except that it only works in PixInsight.

I think it needs to be done with caution so that details
that aren't there at all are portrayed -
sharpening artifacts -
just like the sharpening worms that we all hate so much.

cheers
Allan

[DiscoDuck]

Definitely agreed, Allan, to use with care. And also I think only use it for the deconvolution step - it is not meant to be a general sharpening tool afaik.

It does, for deconvolution, seem much less prone to wiggly worms than algorithms like Richardson-Lucy though, so you can push it a bit further than classical decon.

[Ryderscope]

Another pair of excellent images in the basket there Paul :thumbsup:. I like the ensuing discussion on processing tools as well. I've been using PI for several years now and it has proved invaluable (though I still dabble in PS for some jobs).

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks Rodney.