Ngc 5068

[Dave882]

Hey folks - It's been absolutely amazing to have some good clear sky over the new moon! I decided to park on 2 main targets (pre/post midnight) for as long as the weather would hold up - and lo and behold I managed 6 (almost)whole nights.

The seeing was pretty variable - from FHWM of just under 2 to sky so turbulent ASIAIR refused to acknowledge those fuzzy blobs as stars - but on average I thought I was able to come away with some decent data.

In the end I came away with just shy of 23hrs on NGC5068. This is my second go on this target - and have been really taken by it's colour and structural beauty - as well as the incredible multitude of background galaxies. Unfortunately my plans to spend 1or2 nights out of Sydney on this target never eventuated so many most of the background fuzzies relegated to the noise..

Sooooo, the big news was me finally putting my bigboy pants on and downloading the trial version of PI. Definitely hard to work out which of the billion different options to choose for each operation - but starting to make some progress and actually finding it quite enjoyable just playing with it! I have made about maybe 8-10 repros of the same stack (still APP for stacking and LP gradient removal at this stage) just playing with different features - my final attempt is still nowhere near perfect but ready for constructive feedback (hopefully)...

My process was: ImageSolver>PCC>DBE>GHS(few iterations)>Background Neutralisation>One pass of Unsharp Mask>BlurEx (only star shrink/halos to try and tame overblown & weird technicolour artefacts caused by GHS)>NoiseEx>Assisted colour Calibration

You'll notice that I got some magenta artefacts in my stars for some reason after GHS. My attempts at masks was a fail so still gotta work that out. I couldn't work out how decon can exist without destroying the look of the galaxy and same goes for BlurEx - just made it look plastic so didn't use it for anything other than stars. I used GIMP to kill some of the magenta and resize.

Love to know your thoughts and any processing suggestions please.

Anyways- here's the deal:

B7 Backyard over the new moon
22.7hrs over 6 nights (half with UHC filter 120sec subs, half no filter 60sec subs)
gain 100
C14 non edge @f7 with the Starizona reducer LF
EQ8 pro
Asi2600mc pro
Asi290mm / celestron OAG
ASIAIR pro / APP stack and LP removal / PI / GIMP
Binned (scaled) 80% in stacking

Here's the bigger version. (https://1drv.ms/i/s!ArpSiLT3VkGHiPRdnqnfk75bEH2Xsg?e= kiyvKi)

Thanks for looking

[Startrek]

Dave,
Wow you certainly like a challenge
An excellent Galaxy image of an object most folk wouldn’t even consider under Sydney’s crappy light polluted skies
What is it mag 10 , size 4’ x 6’ under Bortle 7/8 , incredible result and well done for effort alone
I reckon my new 8” would only deliver a fuzzy blob at best so I’ll leave these faint rascals for you blokes with the heavy artillery

Cheers
Martin

[Dave882]

Thanks Martin- thanks mate I appreciate your comments- yeah it’s very rarely imaged even though it comes up nice and high for us. Small and dim certainly makes for a challenge from the suburbs but I reckon you could hit it with your 10” down the coast if you were so inclined. :)

[Geoff45]

Well done David. I hadn’t come across this galaxy before. It doesn’t seem to be very well known—not many mages on Astrobin.or here. That’s surprising.

[strongmanmike]

Excellent result David, I agree, it is a lovely galaxy, there is a nice mix of features resolvable, the OB associations particularly, resolve nicely on this one :thumbsup: had you got away as you were hoping, to a darker sky, you would likely have revealed some galactic cirrus (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/170651342/original) too.

I haven't put my big boy pants on yet :help:...but I think I know what you mean re the BlurEX. Looking at lots of images around now, that have used it and I too see it introducing an almost plastic, unrealistic look to many parts or features of many images and it can tend to make all the fine detail in an area very contrasty and become a similar brightness (analogous to traditional decon making the detail all dot like or in to worms if you are not careful), imparting a granulated look, it' seems to be obvious when it has been used in anything but a gentle light handed way.

Mike

[marc4darkskies]

Great effort on an interesting and quite photogenic galaxy Dave! Well done :thumbsup: It's now on my todo list!

Admire you for taking the plunge into PI! To me, it's an incomprehensively large black box with 100,000 dials and knobs on it! :confused2: I'll stick to PS - where my big boy pants don't have 100 option settings on how to put them on! :lol:

[Dave882]

Thanks guys much appreciated!

Geoff- you’re right there’s hardly any images of this one- surprising as it’s not that small and quite a rewarding target and field. Hopefully a few more can have a shot!!

Mike- yes I had a good look at your excellent effort when I was figuring out my acquisition and processing- and it was probably one of the only deep examples of it (exept for a beautiful image from Capella) that I could find…anywhere!! I’d love to be able to add even a few hours from a dark location as I reckon those beautiful background cirrus & galaxies would start to pop. Re. The processing- I’m sure with some practice and a very very soft hand these Decon tools are still useful- but I just couldn’t keep it natural. Perhaps it’s since I’m so oversampled?

Marc- I’m looking forward to see what you can do! Since I’m pretty much starting from scratch I had a choice between purchasing & learning either PS or PI, so opted for the latter. I think your images prove astrophotographers can do excellent processing in PS too.