M16 in Narrowband

[rat156]

Hi All,

With all the talk about the "pillars", I thought I'd have a crack at them.

LRGB, (Ha, SII, Ha, OIII), 120, 30, 120, 30 minutes, SII and OIII binned 2x2.

The Ha data is taken through a 4.5nm Custom scientific filter, the SII and OIII are Astronomik 13nm filters.

Taken with a Meade RCX400 10" @ f/8 (prime focus). SBig ST-10XME, AO8, MOAG and SBig remote guide head. Guided in front of the fiters @ about 7Hz.

Reprocessed this morning to fix some errors in processing, I like NB, you can play with the colours until you like them.

Cheers
Stuart

[Alchemy]

some nice up close and personal work stuart, lovely detail.

[strongmanmike]

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate that's fantastic!

Some are probably gunna not like the colours but I recon they rock.

Ok, sorry, had to do it...have a look at the Pillars of Creation comparison now, yours could be just a slightly blured version of Hubbles :eyepop:

That AO unit and OAG coupled with NB filters make all the difference huh?

http://upload.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/114723918/original

Love it!

Mike

[Dennis]

Hi Stuart

That is a beautiful image of M16, really quite spectacular! I love both the image scale and the wide view, not often seen together like this. Well done!

Cheers

Dennis

[multiweb]

:eyepop:This is a superb picture! The details are just amazing. Gotta be the best I've ever seen to date coming from an amateur's scope. Terrific work! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[renormalised]

Great shot.....fantastic detail:D:D

Although, Mr Eagle is flying belly up....doing a roll??:P:D:D

[Hagar]

Great image with lovely clarity and contrast. Not sure about the colours and the bird is upside down. Amazing how you get use to seeing the pillars going up not down.
Like it a lot.

[gregbradley]

That is a seriously high quality image Stuart.
Wow.

Greg.

[theodog]

:thumbsup:Nice.:D

[lacad01]

:thumbsup: great stuff !

[telecasterguru]

Stuart,

Just wonderful images.

Could I please ask, when you say, LRGB, (Ha, SII, Ha, OIII), 120, 30, 120, 30 minutes, SII and OIII binned 2x2. What exactly was the process for filters? Sorry if this is a silly question but I don't understand how you used the filters in the LRGB process. Do you use a different filter for each of LRGB?

Frank

[rat156]

Hi Frank,

Sorry about that, I'm getting into lingoland again, the problem with speaking in lingo is it sort of excluded people who don't know what you're talking about. If they don't ask, then they're excluded from the conversation, so thanks for asking.

So "LRGB, (Ha, SII, Ha, OIII), 120, 30, 120, 30 minutes, SII and OIII binned 2x2" means...

For LRGB - I have a monochrome camera, so in order to get colour I have to shoot through at least three different filters and then recombine them as a red channel, a green channel and a blue channel. In this case I've overlayed another channel called luminance which is also monchrome and gives the image more resolution.

For (Ha, SII, Ha, OIII) - these are the filters I used. They are narrowband filters centred on the wavelength of the emmision of Hydrogen, Sulphur, Hydrogen again (infact I just reused the data) and Oxygen, where Ha was used for the luminance and green channels, Sulphur for the red channel and Oxygen for the Blue channel (this is commonly known as the "Hubble Pallette").

For 120, 30, 120, 30 minutes - These are the times I exposed the chip for in total, this was made up of shorter exposures, which I have omitted the details of.

For SII and OIII binned 2x2 - This means I have "binned" the pixels 2x2 in the sensor, where a set of four pixel values are added to give one value, this increases the sensitivity of the camera at the expense of resolution. For the colour channels the loss of resolution is acceptable to shorten exposure times.

So there you have it, a sentence decoded.

Cheers
Stuart

[Tamtarn]

The repro has enhanced the detail Stuart. How about a crop of the pillars the detail looks pretty sharp :thumbsup: Excellent job

[Inmykombi]

You should be very pleased with those images.

Fine work indeed.

[DavidU]

Jeez ! Awesome detail mate, so sharp
Don't tell me this was shot from Melbourne??????:prey2:

[CoolhandJo]

This is so inspiring. To think, a ground based scope of the 10" version could be maipulated like this by you!
Well done

[Matty P]

Beautiful image Stuart. Great work.

:thumbsup:

[rat156]

Yep, good ol' Western Suburbs.

[rat156]

Thanks to everyone for the nice comments. It's good to get the feedback. I also like the constructive criticism, keep it up.

Cheers
Stuart

[marc4darkskies]

Sheeze!!!! That's a seriously high def shot Stuart!!! Fantastic! Well done! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: The seeing must have been pretty darn special that night too!! Hmmm, and I almost like the colours too :) ...

Cheers, Marcus

[AlexN]

Hooooolly crap! :)

Fantastic image dude... looks brilliant..

[coldspace]

Excellent work there,

Who says Meade ACF scopes can't perform.

Regards Matt

[Greg_White]

Great work.

I liked the colour, and the explanation you gave in how you achieved it - that helps mentor the less experienced.

cheers
Greg
:anaut:

[lesbehrens]

wow. thats fantastic. really good.

[KMachell]

G'day Stuart,
Just got back from a couple of weeks in the outback and logged on. Your image is spectacular, you should be proud.

Cheers,
Ken

[Bassnut]

Nearly missed this. Very smick Stuart, smooth and detailed. And an excellent add for Meade, shows it can really produce the goods (well, with a bit of effort on your part).

[Octane]

Stuart,

Incredible, incredible, incredible.

7 Internets to you, sir.

I hope you go about printing these in large format to hang on your walls. They're worth it. Both of them.

Regards,
Humayun