M17 A Black and White Swan

[strongmanmike]

Other than the 90% Moon :mad2:, I had some great conditions again on Thursday night, clear, low humidity, very cold (got to -5C) and very stable atmosphere for most of the night, with excellent seeing, average raw FWHM from 7:30pm - 11:30pm sat very steady between 1.6" - 1.8" then after I'd crossed the meridian and flipped, it deteriorated slowly to about 2.3" as the western horizon approached. I had a couple of technical glitches during the night :doh: (a rare occurrence for me) but all sorted (?) and never the less, managed to still collect almost 5hrs of useable Halpha data. I used the best 3.5hrs or so (FWHM < 1.8") for the brightest areas and the entire 4.7hrs for the outer regions, to get a little deeper in these areas :thumbsup:

Can't wait to get the rest of the NB and colour data next clear night :)

A Black & White Swan (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/174733983/original)

Mike

[Startrek]

Mike ,
Lovely Swan showing superb resolution and detail to boot from your incredible vantage point on top of that mountain , high above the clouds. Absolute chalk and cheese compared to imaging in and around the weeds at 25m above sea level.
Well done !!
Cant wait to see the final image.
By the way is your Newt an Orion UK Carbon 12” f3.9 ??

Cheers
Martone

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Martone :cheers:

My Scope is an Orion Optics UK 12" F3.8 (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/174001328/original), with a four element 3" dia Wynne corrector, FLI Atlas focuser, carbon fibre tube with removable dew shield, 3 X primary mirror cooling fans, secondary mirror heater and in tube primary heater.

Mike

[alpal]

Nice result Mike,
there is always something appealing about a Ha shot -
it always shows great details.

cheers
Allan

[strongmanmike]

I agree and it also conjures up a little nostalgia from the good'ol B&W film days...but much more dynamic range and fine detail, like chalk and cheese :)

I did do a colour film shot (https://pbase.com/image/66997199/original) of this nebula back in 1984, using my 8" F7 Newtonian on an Astro Optical Samson equatorial (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/110764271/original) mount complete with their crappy Delrin drive unit, I recall the 40min of eyeball guiding was very straining and almost impossible to keep the guide star on the cross hairs!! The linked photo actually shows the mount upgraded a year later with a beautiful specially imported Thomas Mathis drive, which with good PA, tracked beautifully and was much easier to eyeball guide!

Mike

[Anth10]

Classic retro shot Mike!
Just like an old Scanlon footy card except for
Astronomers hehehe.

Anth

[AlexN]

No less than I'd expect from you mate - this is sensational!

I was surprised when I imaged this a couple of weeks back to see how bright its core is! Its incredibly contrasty and a bit of a challenge to process... Far more than I expected.

[strongmanmike]

Thanks a lot guys :thumbsup:

I have managed to collect some OIII and RGB, the bloody Moon was bright and very nearby :eyepop: but a a preliminary process looks like I can salvage a respectable result :prey:.

So, stay tuned for a "A Maelstrom in Sagittarius" :windy: :D

Mike

[AlexN]

I've sat the last couple of nights out because everything I'm planning on imaging was less than 20° from the full moon... Given the weather conditions we've had this past 6 months, it hurts to not be running the rig on nights where the sky is so clear... I guess I could focus on Ha data while the moon is so close - but OIII takes a pretty nasty hit from the moon!

[strongmanmike]

Yeah I wasn't quite sure I was sane :nerd: but I was keen to take advantage of the clear sky above the mountain and Mamma Mia, yet again, the seeing didn't disappoint. The improved seeing I have over my last location still feels like a novelty and like it won't last or something buuut it persists :prey: My move to Eagleview has really shown me how much location assists and made me want to have a scope in the Andes, ideally the Atacama proper and over 2000m, would be good (please :face:). The guys with scopes there must be literally over the Moon :prey2:

Mike

[AlexN]

Here in my lovely little spot 60km North of Brisbane City and ~20km from the East coast, I've not ever seen 1.6" seeing...

~2.0" is "GOOD" for me, and a few days back, I saw a night where the seeing was at a peachy 3.6"...

Luckily for me, my rig has 3.05"/px resolution, so the seeing is never my primary concern, not compared to moon phase and just having visible stars...

I love to complain, but at least its bortle 4 ~ 4.5, life could be a lot worse!

[strongmanmike]

Hey man, we all make the best of what we got and you definitely do a bloody incredible job with what you have! :thumbsup: I took my first astrophoto (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/159076500/original) in 1982 at the age of 14/15 (not quite sure which exactly) and it took 40 years, four observatories, many cameras and lots of telescopes, to realise what was the dream of that 15 year old, an observatory on a genuine mountain, so I'm keen to make the most of it while I can, cause I ain't likely to have any better before I leave the land of the living, :drink: :thumbsup:

Mike

[Retrograde]

Phenomenal resolution on this Mike!!

I am fascinated by those apparent tessellations above and to the right of the large dark section. I looked through a number of images of M17 on Astrobin before I finally found an image that also showed them properly which (IIRC) was an APOD image blended with some professional data as a processing exercise.

Looking forward to the final colour image when conditions & time allow. :D

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Pete, yeah working on the colour version (HaOIIIRGB) now, I reworked the Ha a tad too, more ruthless rejection and slightly different decon, for the main body and I've convinced my self it was worth it and have managed to extract a little more detail...others may not be able to tell but by Jove, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it! :P :)

Mike

[TrevorW]

:eyepop:Hey Mike get some colour in your life, life is not just black and white :):rofl::rofl:

[ua1]

Reminds me of the Kodak tech pan 2415 days as I recall buying a 100 foot roll of it. Hypered it was amazing. Anyway enough nostalgia, nice shot Mike.

[strongmanmike]

Oh I often reminisce the good'ol film days (https://pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/in_the_begining) ah sigh, it was so fiddly and unreliable and bluudy hard....so when the quality I can manage now comes down, heck, I have been around long enough to really appreciate just how good it is, incredible difference in fact. So much cool gear is available off the shelf now too, stuff that we only dreamed of or would have had to get custom made for mega $"s back in the day, it's great now :thumbsup: and mono/Ha shots like this, still blow my mind :eyepop: people new to this caper, have no idea how lucky they are.

Mike