Rho Ophiuchi Nebula Repro!

[gregbradley]

I have been trying to take this image now for about a year. It started out with an SBig STL11 and FSQ and it looked nice in a few luminance images but then the dreaded clouds moved in. This happened several times over the course of a year.

So Friday night, great seeing, clear skies, man I must have won the lottery!

Tak BRC250, Apogee U16M again.

LRGB 90 50 50 50. Minimal processing.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/116221266

Greg.

[mill]

Greg that is a cracker of an image, very nice and smooth with perfect colours :eyepop:
Very nice :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Bassnut]

Very smooth, excellent, but wow, what a difference to this

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/102416400

What happened there?

[leon]

Nice one Greg, I just love this area of the night sky.

Leon

[gregbradley]

The image you linked was taken with an FSQ106ED with the
F3.64 reducer making approx 330mm focal length and the Apogee U16M so that is absolute
maximum widefield with a telescope. The one I have just taken
is at 1268mm focal length and the U16M so the image scale is
much more zoomed in so it is only part of the whole nebula
complex.

[gregbradley]

Thanks for that. I am glad you liked it.



Thanks Leon. Its one of my favourites too.

[Bassnut]

Yes, I understand that, but the colour balance is completely different. I like em both though Greg :thumbsup:.

[renormalised]

These images are works of art, and scientifically interesting at the same time. As all images should be...Great work, Greg:D:D

[pmrid]

Fabulous. I particularly like the wispy smokey quality you have captured here with such delightful detail.
Peter

[Craig_L]

Wow! Yes, a work of art. Should be in a gallery. Very mysterious, subtle colours and lots of detail.

[strongmanmike]

Your handling of the processing on this one is interesting Greg. The dust looks sensational but the colours look just a bit sort of dirty and unatural to me but man what a vista, as I said in a previous post, this is where the BRC shines :thumbsup:

Nice work

Mike

[gregbradley]

Thanks for that.



The BRC really picks up a lot of detail on bright objects.



Wow, quite a compliment - thanks.




I rechecked the colour combine of this as the blue wasn't what I expected either. I redid it and the colour is richer and more natural now. I needed to renormalise the RGB before combine. I find
I often have to do that. I never had to with Astrodon filters but with others I do otherwise I can get unusual colour. Thanks for picking it up.

Greg

Cheers

Greg.

[gregbradley]

You're right Fred, I needed to renormalise the RGB before combining. I need to do that sometimes and other times not really. Astrodons were good in that regard.

I've redone the image.

Greg.

[multiweb]

That is just a great shot Greg! :eyepop: I just love it, colors, composition, processing. Top shelf stuff :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Thanks Marc!

[beren]

:thumbsup: Impressive image Greg congrats......I've tried my amateurish hand at this area of sky so many times too ;) only to be jinked with cloud appearing from nowhere

[gregbradley]

Thanks Beren.

Yeah clouds and rain etc are one of the barriers to this game.
One aspect of my site that is almost amusing is it can be totally overcast, I go inside and watch a DVD and come out every now and then to check. I see totally clear skies. I setup my gear to run and then
wonder why all of a sudden the autoguider stopped and look up to see fully clouded skies again. I call them sucker holes in the cloud. They suck me in every time!

[marc4darkskies]

The repro is much nicer but Greg, you should never normalise your R, G & B data! Normalising is really only meant to be done for mono subs within each channel, not across channels. If you do it between the R,G, and B components you may normalise a part of the image that is supposed to have a colour differential - pretty certain for this subject. The effect will be to subdue or remove colour in parts of the image. You should combine the RG & B as is and subsequently adjust any colour imbalance.

Cheers, Marcus

[gregbradley]

Thanks Marcus.
Yes I can see that, normalise puts the values in an image into the same range and as you point out different colours would have different values in some areas of the image where a particular colour is stronger than the others.

I instead used auto on DDP in CCDstack to make the subs more the same range for each channel. Then I did combine. This works pretty well although it may be better to manually do the DDP and set it to where they all look about the same brightness as auto can black clip a tad.

I redid the image and the colours came out better again.

So its a repro of a repro! Same link.

http://jjd.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/116221266/large

Greg.

[Tom Davis]

Very pretty; I too love this area! I'd like to see some more detail in Barnard objects; yours are very dark. They have some amazingly delicate structures if you can bring them out.

Tom

[gregbradley]

Thanks Tom.

If I took some more exposure time I could push the dark areas harder. If I push too hard at the moment there'll be a bit of noise.

Greg,

[RB]

Greg first I'd like to say that I really like your image.
I find this area of sky so rich and interesting and full of diverse objects that one can spend ages exploring and photographing here.
You've done a lovely job with this especially since it's difficult to balance the colours on this one.

I've been waiting for a long time to get decent weather to finish my image but have been clouded out each time too so I've left it unfinished till next season.
Here's what I ended up with in the limited time I've had.

So great work mate on a most interesting subject !!


62385 (http://www.iimagespace.com/page/ds/IC4603.htm)

[danielsun]

Stunning image with incredible color :thumbsup:.
Nice work Greg.


Cheers Daniel.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Daniel. It took several goes!

[Lester]

Fantastic image Greg, the contrast from the very black to the lighter areas is eye catching.

All the best for more.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Lester. Its a very pretty part of the sky and one I like to image each year.

Greg.

[bloodhound31]

Your work is always worth going off-site to look at mate. Beaut stuff Greg.

Baz.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Baz, nice of you to say.

Greg.

[TheDecepticon]

Very lovely stuff. Nice to see something different!:)

[jjjnettie]

Flipping awesome!
Beautiful
Gorgeous
Love it!

[Octane]

Greg,

As always, beautiful work.

Looks like someone's smoking a pretty massive cigar up there. ;)

The diffraction spike tops it all off for me.

Regards,
Humayun

[gregbradley]

Thanks. I've imaged this area before and wanted a new look at it.



Thanks Jeanette. Its a pretty area for sure.



Thanks Humayun I am glad you liked it. Some people don't like diffraction spikes, I don't mind them. Roland Christen described one of my images with diffraction spikes as car headlights through an insect screen!:lol:

[Octane]

Greg,

I keep saying that diffraction spikes are the way of the future! :P

I guess, for me, they just look like classical stars. Besides, it's a great way to see what's the brightest star(s) of them all in an area of the sky! :)

Regards,
Humayun

[gregbradley]

Yes I like them generally unless they get too large.

[atalas]

Beautiful Greg!

[gregbradley]

Thanks Louie.