NGC1365 repro

[gregbradley]

I redid this one. I realised the background was too black clipped on the original and the stars had been damaged by some processing steps on the galaxy making them stunted.

This is a bit more subtle and shows perhaps a tad more detail and the stars are more natural. Thought I'd go for the modern galaxy look which is to have a lightish background so as not to lose out the faint details and show the correct night sky colour of a shade of grey rather than black.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/108402496 repro


Here is the original posting:

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/108037927

What do you think? I haven't done a lot of galaxies really.

Greg.

[bluescope]

Looks better to me Greg as you say the stars are more natural and better detail in galaxy. The brightest star in bottom right of first pic was very pinkish looking and a tad bloated. 1365 is one of my favourites.

:thumbsup:

[Alchemy]

dont know what everyone else will say , but i like it better than the first:thumbsup:

[Hagar]

Well Greg. I like it much better than the first. It is showing detail in the dark dust lanes in the galaxy and your stars look way better than they did in the previous version.

Really Nice Greg.

[renormalised]

Probably better than the first:D Have you noticed, but you may have also picked up some dwarf galaxies in 1365's neighbourhood. There's some faint nebulous patches scattered here and there amongst the other background galaxies and the stars. Very low surface brightness, but you can make them out:)

Most look like ellipticals.

[gregbradley]

Yes there are a number of background galaxies visible. Amazing how many there are.

Greg.

[atalas]

Ah!looking excellent now Mr Bradley.

[strongmanmike]

Yes this is better than the first version with a better less fake looking and lighter sky with more faint fuzzies visible, there is the impression of more detail in the galaxy too. The vignetting is more norticable now though.

It is a magnificent galaxy :thumbsup:.

Mike

[peeb61]

AAh Greg, you've done it again, just superb. The first was awesome and the Repro just perfect.

Lots of detail, colour..nice!

Paul

[Starkler]

Now that is very nice.

Many of the images I see here of 1365 dont even contain the full length of the spiral arms. You have captured it all wonderfully.

[gregbradley]

Hi Mike,

Oops I missed that with the vignetting. Good catch. I fixed that.

I probably did not use flats on this one as I was finding there with some images the flats made them worse. Nothing Gradient Xterminator can't handle plus a tad of gradient channel handling.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Paul.



Thanks Geoff. One of the advantages of imaging at F5 is capturing more of the faint detail.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Steve: Looks better to me Greg as you say the stars are more natural and better detail in galaxy. The brightest star in bottom right of first pic was very pinkish looking and a tad bloated. 1365 is one of my favourites.

:thumbsup:[/quote]

Thanks Bluescope. The stars did look funny. I think what happened is some processing actions I have affect the whole image even when you have lassoed it only to one area. So I was affecting the stars adversely even though I thought I had excluded them.




Thanks for that.



Thanks I like the 2nd better as well.



There are several there.



Thanks for pointing out the too dark background.

Cheers,

Greg.

[rat156]

Hi Greg,

Didn't want to say too much about the first one. It was very violet.

Second one is much much better, though still a little too violet for me.

Better than I can do though!

Cheers
Stuart

[spearo]

Much better indeed, seems like its more linear.
I personally like the background a bit darker, probably at a point between the two images
personal taste i guess
cheers
frank

[gregbradley]

Thanks Stuart. I checked Rob Gendlers and a few others renditions of this
object and theirs are quite bluish. Mine may be slightly different hue of blue, not sure about violet - could that be a monitor callibration thing?

Greg.



Frank,

There seems to be a trend where galaxy images are displayed with a more neutral grey background in an attempt to display more detail, show up more faintness that disappears when the balck point is shifted too hard and also on some deep images to show up interstellar flux (this image doesn't show any though).

As you say really a personal choice.

Greg.

[Garyh]

Much nicer than the first Greg! You sure pull out the fainter outer arms nicely! something I don`t think a DSLR could do unless you had real mega data and a dark sky
:thumbsup:

[rat156]

Hi Greg,

I do colour critical work on this computer, and have calibrated the monitor. Yours is definitely violet/purple in comparison to Genler's and others. Not a criticism, just an observation.

It's still a great picture.

Cheers
Stuart

[gregbradley]

Thanks Stuart.

I looked at it again this morning with fresh eyes and you are absolutely right.

I think the violet cast came when I used curves on red to try to bring out any H11 areas in the arms.

I have corrected that colour and I think I have it now. This gives me an insight into the fine colour work needed on galaxies. They are quite different to nebulas when processing. Much finer and dimmer and subtle.

http://jjd.pbase.com/image/108402496 (same link as before).

Greg.

[iceman]

That's a beautiful image Greg, one of my favourite galaxies and you've presented it wonderfully.

[renormalised]

Greg, I didn't mention this before, but if you look to the right of the galaxy, there's a faint streak running upper left to lower right across the image. Looks like you may have had a faint satellite or something go by when you took the shot:)

[gregbradley]

Thanks very much Mike. I was wanting to find out how the Tak and FLI camera would work out for doing galaxies. It works fine as long as I do 4 or 5 hours. But I suppose that is true of almost any setup - galaxies like a lot of exposure time.





There seems to always be something flying through the skies in imaging.
Sometimes I healing tool them out if they are too objectionable. I didn't worry here as it was faint. One object I imaged (ngc 1097) I couldn't believe the amount of "traffic" in the shot. A jet, a meteorite, a satellite - a real mess.

Greg.

[troypiggo]

Magnificent. I really like the repro.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Troy.

Greg.:)

[richardo]

Hi Greg,
aaahhh that's a world of difference!
I looked at the first and thought, mmm what have you done??

The reprocess shows the galaxy much better with it's dust lanes and colour.
Lots of fainter stuff showing up nicely too.
Really like your subtle colours.
Looks great!
Nicely done!

All the best
Rich

[gregbradley]

The reprocess shows the galaxy much better with it's dust lanes and colour.
Lots of fainter stuff showing up nicely too.
Really like your subtle colours.
Looks great!
Nicely done!

All the best
Rich[/quote]

Thanks Rich. It sometimes is a bit of journey processing an image.

Greg.

[AlexN]

repro is a real winner! :) well done mate.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Alex.

Greg.

[rat156]

Hi Greg,

I like the last one better.

I love shooting galaxies, but yeah they are a bugger to process. The LP my way makes them a real challenge.

Congratulations on producing a fine image, now no going back to those easy nebulae!

Cheers
Stuart

[multiweb]

The repro looks great. Big improvement. Much smoother and a lot more details. Top work.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Stu. I wish the nebs were easy. I am in the middle of processing one that has nice data but putting the whole thing together seems to lack something.

Greg.



Thanks for that. There seems to be a different approach to Galaxies as they are more subtle and dimmer. I have to tie my hit the saturation button hand behind my back!

Greg.