NGC 253 in Sculptor, repro added

[rat156]

Hi All,

Well after posting on other people's threads on this I thought I'd better put mine up.

NGC 253

LRGB (100, 30, 30, 30 minutes)

GSO 8" RC on G11 mount.

SBIG ST-10XME, CFW10, MOAG, AOL and RGH (that's a lot of acronyms).

The processing is a bit rough around the edges, I may improve it over the next couple of days...

Cheers
Stuart

[leinad]

Stuart, that is the most amazing amateur photo I've seen of NGC253! :eyepop:
The depth of field is awesome. You've really captured the barred spiral well.

You should send it over to the APOD guys. Thanks for sharing :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Very smooth. Great colors and processing. Top work. :thumbsup:

[Hagar]

Very nice Stuart. A lovely galaxy with loads of detail to capture and this you have done very nicely.

Well done, a great image.

[Paul Haese]

Both our images look very similar. I did a reprocess last night and worked on the sharpening and mine came out looking very much like yours. However my colouring is different to yours. You have more of the Ha regions showing over my image. I think your stars are slight smaller to mine too. A lovely image and interesting to see the results from the same OTA but with different cameras. Well done Stuart.

[allan gould]

Really excellent image Stuart. Great guiding and detail - cant say more than the others have already said

[David Fitz-Henr]

Great image Stuart - some nice detail in there !

[TheDecepticon]

That's good! Very good!:thumbsup:

[Robbie]

:thumbsup:

[DavidU]

Nice detail and colors stuart. Noice work.:thumbsup:

[Lester]

Very nice image Stuart, with heaps of detail and large scale.

[strongmanmike]

Very nice job of a favourite galaxy Stuart :thumbsup:

Mike

[desler]

Gee that RC certainly packs a punch!

Really nice work there Stuart.

Darren

[spearo]

well done Stuart,
I always look to the center and if it feels like i could fall into it then i know the image is well done
yours has a nice 3d feel to it!
The edge is also nicely resolved
well done
frank

[Tamtarn]

Good job Stuart. Like to see you try a repro as you suggested just bet you can improve it a little. :)

[Bassnut]

Youve handled the colour and exposure in the core and spreading out from it well Stuart (as did Paul), I found processing that difficult to look natural.

[Octane]

Stuart,

Stunning. Superb work. One of the best I've seen. :)

My only gripe is your composition.

Regards,
Humayun

[Bassnut]

Stuart is useing an OAGer, composition is often difficult ;)

[scopemankit]

Very nice image

[rat156]

Firstly, thanks to everyone. I'm sure I can make it a bit better, so look out for the post.

I mainly wanted to see the difference the camera makes as Paul had imaged on pretty much the same night with the same scope.

As for the composition, I actually don't like the galaxy dead centre of the picture, is goes against all my other photographic tendencies, conjunction of thirds was what I was taught and I'll stick with it. Having said that as Fred pointed out I sometimes have little choice in the matter. This one really had to be like this, or maybe rotated a bit (about the centre of the frame) as there was only one really acceptable guide star near the galaxy. Even so the guide exposures were a second each, which is not ideal if the mount has to be "bumped", which it did as I haven't gotten around to doing the PEC yet. Maybe I should do that next. The problem is that it takes up a fair bit of imaging time and that's a precious commodity recently.

Cheers
Stuart

[gregbradley]

Great shot Stuart. Congrats.

Greg.

[rat156]

Reprocessed the image.

I have some star trailing, which I attempted to fix, produced some funny stuff around the foreground stars. I like the galaxy, don't like the stars...

Cheers
Stuart

[Paul Haese]

I like the second image. Great colours and heaps of small detail.