Deep Antennae galaxies

[strongmanmike]

The run of clear weather lately, that has enabled many of us to finally get out for multiple nights aaaand given us all hope of a El Nino coming :prey: also gave me the opportunity to finally hit something properly from Eagleview Observatory :prey2: :)

So blessed with around seven clear nights over the last New Moon period, I decided to go up (I'm still not setup for remote operation :sadeyes:) and hammer the famous Antennae galaxies in Corvus, with something at least approaching a serious exposure time, to try and finally utilise the excellent conditions at Eagleview, to really showcase something to the full. In the end I managed to get up there for four of those clear nights and accumulated nearly 24hrs of exposure across LRGB&Ha filters....and it was fun to be back in the long exposure multiple night project seat again :drink:..hic! .

Enjoying seeing FWHM of between 1.6"-2.1" over the period of Lum collection (psst! no BlurEx :P ) coupled with the dark skies, the result is a very deep fairly detailed view of these enigmatic interacting galaxies and (referencing Rolf Olsens data confirmed via photometric calibration of the integrated FITS luminance file against the USNO catalogues, see below) one that reaches a stella limiting magnitude of around Mag 25 and reveals an extensive faint flocculant outer halo enveloping the whole spectacular gravitational dance, cool :thumbsup:

One of the benefits of a true dark sky site is the lack of gradients present in your data, no gradient removal was required for this image!

PS. The nature of the faintness here makes viewing on a good calibrated (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/55347254/original) monitor in a darkened room worth it I recon...hope you enjoy :)

1) Deep Antennae Galaxies (https://www.flickr.com/photos/strongman/52852925619/in/dateposted/) (click on image to have a surf around with your cursor)

2) Enhanced Luminance (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/173577623/original) showing outer halo and star stream extensions

3) Lot's and lot's of faint fuzzies in the Full frame full size image (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/173573605/original) (Use your screen sliders, or fingers on your phone, to have a surf)

4) Here is a comparison with Hubble at the point of collision (https://pbase.com/image/173578409/original)

Also worth comparing to my last effort on this pair (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/antennae_galaxies), back in 2013 from just outside suburban Canberra at 600m AMSL, with the same scope but with bigger pixels and inferior skies, in terms of darkness, transparency and seeing (only 6.5hrs Lum though)

NB: Worth mentioning also, the masterful Rolf Olsen, who is in a class of his own when it comes to long exposure deep imaging, did a similar (75hr!) project (https://www.rolfolsenastrophotography.com/Astrophotography/Antennae-Extreme-Deep-Field/i-HSMd7jt) on the Antennae, several years ago now and as it happens, using a very similar setup to mine, so, I had a great reference with which to compare and confirm my results, thanks Rolf! :thumbsup:

Mike

[Anth10]

Ace of spades shot Michael!!
You’re back in your element dishing up these sort of space shots. Always in awe with the deep imaging your setup produces afforded by of course the big sky of your obs.
Credit to ya.

Anthony.

[kosborn]

Amazing! I can only imagine what the skies are like up there.



I'm looking forward to Orroral Valley re-opening so I can get back to my favourite dark sky site.

[Startrek]

Mike,
The image says it all
Bloody unbelievable
That monster rig of yours and your Obs on top of the world is simply incredible
Enjoy every minute up there !!

Cheers
Martin

[TrevorW]

You rock man, that is awesome, love the colours, and that rig is nearly as big as you :)

[gregbradley]

That's a wow image Mike. Congrats, your hard work on your new observatory is paying dividends.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Thanks a lot guys, very happy with the project, was good to finally get a proper decent image under my Eagleview belt, one worthy of the site quality :thumbsup:

Trev, you talking about this image (https://pbase.com/image/173571363/original) :P t'was taken on the last night of image capture for the Antennae, by my life long friend and astro buddy Attila...he and I attached :)..we had a great night of observing through our 18" F4.1 Dob (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/173397228/original) while the Antennae photons were being collected :thumbsup:

Mike

[strongmanmike]

To help identify the features and details captured, I have added a comparison (https://pbase.com/image/173578409/original) with some awesome Hubble data of the cores of the colliding galaxies :)

Mike

[marc4darkskies]

That's a super long exposure for you Mike ... and it's paid off! It's a gorgeous image! Wonderfully deep, detailed and colourful. The somewhat fluro look offends my saturation sensibilities though but, so what! Right? :lol:

How long are your subs by the way?

[strongmanmike]

Thanks a lot Marcus...and good to see you posting again :thumbsup:



He he, yeah, yeah, I knooow :rolleyes:, I do like my colour, huh?.. I think its Tony and Daphne Hallas's (http://www.astrophoto.com/images.htm) fault, all those years ago :P. many didn't (and don't) like their penchant for saturated colour either. Dunno if you checked out all my links in the post but I think I was heavily influenced by the HST shot (https://64.media.tumblr.com/7cdc62c6432a6f57d16b37b85ed060fc/tumblr_p26xgqCtw61vazqxpo1_1280.jpg ) in the comparison too :question:.. I just like the strong delineated (some peoples flouro...what's'a wrong'a with'a flouro'a anyway'a..Maama Mia?) colour I guess?..must just be a thaang :question:...yeah so what? :) :lol:



10min ea for Lum and Ha, 5min ea for RGB

[astronobob]

Amazing beautiful image Mike, you legend,,
I always enjoy the hubble comparisons but I often also google search for other images 'Antennae galaxies' for comparisons aswell,, and yours is simply above by leaps and bounds, gorgeous star colours, the extending 'Tails' have such solid signal and de-tail, -pun- and obviousely the deep background is full of galaxies and even some galactic clusters by-the-looks,
Hmm Ive said anough, Totally exquisit champ :cool:

[strongmanmike]

Thanks a lot Bob, really glad you enjoyed it, positive coments like yours makes the long hours worth it :thumbsup:

Mike

[alpal]

Great results Mike,
that's a lot of hard work too - 24 hours and in the cold weather at altitude!
I also think there's a tad too much colour saturation
but that's subjective.
What comes next? -
I know you're itching to take the Sombrero - LOL


cheers
Allan

[Andy01]

Well, all that hard work has certainly paid off! :D

Crackerjack image Mike, the high-res version seen in a darkened room on my calibrated Eizo monitor is a joy to surf around.

Playing Where's Wally with all the feint fuzzies was fun! :party2:

Top job, have another beer, you deserve it! :drink:

[strongmanmike]

Aaaah yes, I aaam a little too flamboyant...sometimes :question: it's about creating punch, shazam, pow! :P

Wasn't all hard work, not that cold either really, two of the four nights only got down to 5-6C, positively balmy :D...one hit zeroC though, with a very light frost :question:



Fuuuunny yoooou shoooould saaaay that Andy....arhem...hic! :drink: :P

Mike

[matlud]

Wow, that is a top notch image Mike! Great detail and colour, and you picked up the outer halo. A just reward for all of your hard work. CS, Mat

[strongmanmike]

Thanks a lot Mat :thumbsup: It was good to be out for multiple nights in quick succession again, been a while, got some visual observing in too, with the 18" Dob (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/173309205/original)...can only imagine what living in a region like the Atacama would be like...it would kill me :eyepop: but be worth the risk :P :lol:

Mike

[N1]

Been looking forward to something like this coming from the new obsy. Great shot and effort Mike thanks for sharing.

[Paul Haese]

Nice shot Mike. I like the colour balance but maybe it looks a little fluro like others have said. It's mainly in the reds and magentas to me. The blues look good and star colours look nice to me. Background looks an even charcoal too.

[Dave882]

Stunning capture Mike! So much detail it’s truely breathtaking. This is such a fascinating target and you’ve showcased it beautifully!

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Mirko, I was too :thumbsup: Hey, if the El Nino intensifies I should be able to do more shoots like this...until all the resulting extra-dried out undergrowth, causes the wild fires to start again aaaand all the accompanying smoke...:scared2:...:sadeyes:



Thanks Paul. I'm hear'n ya but the unease with the appearence of the red/magenta, is kinda ironic because Ha emission is in fact a perfect example of fluro ie. Fluorescence :lol:



Thanks so much Dave, I think it came together ok too :thumbsup:

Cheers all

Mike

[aandk]

That's wonderful

[strongmanmike]

Cheers (I'm going to go with you being the "a" in aandk) :)

Mike

[Geoff45]

Nice detail in the galaxies Mike. For me the tidal tails are a little too strong—after all in reality they should be really faint in comparison with the the galaxies

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Geoff, for the feedback and while I think I know what you are getting at (ie. respecting the light?) and besides not looking as good then :sadeyes:.. I have to kinda disagree anyway. The famous ansae are in fact actually surprisingly bright, at least compared to other faint outer regions of popularly imaged galaxies :shrug:. I also did no separate specific lassoing etc to artificially brighten the tails (like I suspect many others have done on this pair), this is their stretched relative brightness using the deep data set and you can see this in the enhance luminance version, which is a stretched and curves version of the otherwise unaltered raw Lum data. It is very, almost universally, common in processing to try and reveal the outer very faint arms of a spiral galaxy for example, think NGC 1566, NGC 1300 et al heck even M42 and the Keyhole area etc by using similar stretching techniques...so I'm not sure why you think this is an issue with this galaxy? :shrug: I did try and keep the two interacting galaxies less bright, purely to better reveal the inner fine details, which granted, in the perfect World would be even brighter but we would lose all that glorious fine inner detail :)...it's a balancing act in the end...but again, I do appreciate your thoughts :thumbsup:

Mike