Eta Car good seeing

[kinetic]

Seeing here has been very good for a few nights now in a row.
Only thing spoiling it has been the high cloud.
It comes and goes all night but is usually so slow moving that
I have given up waiting for a sucker hole, retire to bed, only to
see the most beautiful, crisp, cloud free dawn!

The Jetstream map also has been really positive.

This morning it all came together at 4am but I could only get in
140 odd frames before twilight started.

Not my sharpest Eta but my first since making the homemade worm (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=43091)
gear.

Steve

[strongmanmike]

Hi Res Steve does it again :thumbsup:

I wish I had good seeing more often, heck even genuine "average" seeing more often would be welcomed :sadeyes:

MIke

[DavidU]

Very nice Stevo !

[jjjnettie]

It was a nice morning up here too. We must have been imaging Eta at the same time.;)
I only hope my capture is as good as yours.
Nice work Steve.:)

[multiweb]

Very sharp Steve. Top work indeed. :thumbsup:

[Quark]

Very done Steve, I especially like the look of monochrome images as negative images. Often, as a negative image, fine structure seems to be better defined.

Well maybe not better defined but different and I think different in a good way. The fickle finger in the negative image really has a raised up, almost 3D quality about it.

Regards
Trevor

[jase]

Excellent resolution Steve. Lucky imaging at its best. Stars look a little crunchy and saturated to my tastes, but the nebulosity is something special. Well done and thanks for sharing your efforts. We going to see a colour rendition of this sometime?

[kinetic]

Lucky? I'll say :)

I have to admire the people who still persevere without a permanent
setup and still stay passionate about imaging/observing.

I quite often have nights, where it seems just perfect for imaging
and all the factors are in place, only to say oh bugger it, I just
can't be bothered tonight.

Thanks for the comments everyone.
One day I'll get the colour to work Jase, I'm hopeless at the moment :)

PS: how did your Eta go Jeanette?

Steve

[AlexN]

Nice one Steve! Really really impressive resolution!

[kinetic]

Thanks Alex,

for those who doubt whether the jetstream or a well placed
weather system affects your success or not....

This morning, 4am-5am was some of the best seeing I have
ever experienced here in Adelaide.
I was not seriously imaging, only taking a few piggyback DSLR
shots and then I turned on the DSI to get some red channel on
Eta C.
The stars were rock steady.
This set has been resized Bspline 2x before processing.
There is a closeup of the Fickle Finger again.
The negative has been extra sharpened to show how far
the seeing has allowed me to push the data.
And finally, the jetstream and MSL map for this morning.

Steve

[AlexN]

looking forward to the lrgb shot mate.. Looking fantastic!

[kinetic]

A work in progress Alex.
Moon is in the way now though for a fortnight or so....

Steve

[AlexN]

I got 4 words for you steve..

Buy, Hydrogen, Alpha, Filter :)

[Hagar]

Lovely detail Steve. Starting to pull a lot more of the fine detail now. Lucky boy getting better than average seeeeeeeing. It is nearly always crap here with all the mountains around me.
Keep at em mate.

[kinetic]

An ongoing project......

The Red is the channel I'm not happy with but here is an LRGB
using the Lum from 29Oct and RGB from last night Nov 15th.\
Blue and green were good frames but red had a slight off-focus.

I tried a few times this arvo to do an LLRGB as per Gendler's website
but all efforts diminished the lum detail too much.
This straight LRGB seems to be best result.

FL 1500mm.....tracking was exceptional on the homemade GEM.

Steve

[strongmanmike]

Steve that's excellent mate

Thought you might like to see this?....Here's how you stack up against other Fickles namely from Hubble, AP 6" APO, ESO 2.2m and a superb 20" corrected Cassegrain ;)

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/119390675/original

Not bad :thumbsup:

Mike

[AlexN]

Excellent indeed Steve!

Great work... The resolution you get with your setup is enviable! :)

[Paul Haese]

Nice colour image Steve. The nebula detail is really good. Fickle finger is well seen and resolved.

[kinetic]

Thank you guys. Thanks Mike for the effort you went to!
It shows up a lot of things with Mike's comparison.
One being, how wrong the colour mix was :)

What looks ok to my eye is way off compared to the
Hubble Palette etc.

I wish I could post my 4 raws....R,G,B and Lum and see what
others could get out of it. Can I upload them here with the
uploader, or is that reserved for animations etc?
They are FITS 1,600kb files each.

Steve

[AlexN]

steve, hubble pallete is a bloody long way from what an rgb pic should look like as hubble pallete is done with emission line narrow band filters. Ha, s2 and o3. For a natural colour image, i think yours is pretty spot on..

[kinetic]

Thanks Alex,

I checked a few images around the place and yeah, the Keyhole
really is embedded in a sickly Magenta/Aqua field but with low
saturation. My image for some reason comes out with just the
right saturation 'feel' to it with a 100% blend of LRGB.
With only a sky background correction, I do nothing more? :shrug:
I read that the blend should be more like 50% for the RGB....
Not sure what is happening there. I gotta do more reading up
on the subject.
Also...the individual RGBs are not sharpened...only the Lum.
Does that matter?

I thought there was more to it than that.
Anyway...another 24hrs of LLRGB attempts and I have no better image
than the previos one posted.
Here are a few crops though. Finger with gross over-sharpening
and Humunculus with a different curve.

Steve

[AlexN]

you only want to sharpen the lum.. the RGB images can even be blurred if they are noisy.. the Lum layer should be 100% opacity and the colour (set to either soften or colour blending mode) should be anywhere between 40 ~ 50% opacity, with saturation boosted rather heavily...

If your raws are only 1.6mb each, feel free to E-mail them to me.. I'd love to have a stab at the processing.. PM me and I'll send you my email address if you're keen...