Olympic Torch in the Southern Skies

[gregbradley]

Its been a while since I posted an image here. House move, work, holidays etc.

I got some imaging done in the last 3 nights at my dark site. This was Thurs night and it was windy but clear with a 2/3rds moon (25KMH wind or so).

I also measured the seeing using the O111 filter at around .94 to 1.6.
Perhaps that would have been different with a luminance filter? But it seemed to validate what I thought that west of the Great Dividing Range has the better seeing than East of it as the airflow seems to be predominantly from the west to east.

Herschels Ray is in the Vela Supernova Remnant which is one of the most interesting areas in the Southern Sky.

It looks here like an Olympic Torch with a trail of smoke.

Astrodon 5nm S11HaO111 100 100 100 all 10 minute subs.

TEC180FL, FLI Proline 16803 at -35C, Tak NJP mount autoguided with SBig ST402ME and Astrotech 66ED piggybacked.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/122350996/large

I also took a few Vela Supernova Remnant images. I found it hard to locate areas I wanted to image in the remnant as the Sky V6.0 does not show it in its database as it seems to concentrate mainly on Northern Objects. If anyone has a map of the Vela Supernova Remnant I would appreciate some advice as I spent a number of hours trial and erroring to find aspects of it I wanted to image.

Greg.

[TrevorW]

Hey Greg thats a stunner

[AlexN]

Im a sucker for shots of the Vela SNR... All aspects of it blow my mind, but high res shots of Herschels Ray do it for me the most.... High res shots from a big APO are AWESOME! :)

Great work Greg!

[astroron]

Greg , what a stunner, really beautiful:eyepop:

[avandonk]

Beautiful image of a faint object Greg. You would not believe it but I have been making some maps with images superimposed of the Vela region.

I will put them up now.

Here

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=57246

Bert

[avandonk]

Here is your image on the map Greg.

Bert

[strongmanmike]

The processing looks a tad rough Greg but at the size displayed at least, visually it is really quite spectacular :eyepop:.

Is that a crop or the full frame?

Oooooh...I will have that camera soon :2thumbs:

Mike

[LGT150]

Je ne connaissais pas c'est une image de très haut niveau merci de nous la faire partager.
Best regards Lucien .

[mswhin63]

That is a really fantastic image.

[telecasterguru]

Super image.

frank

[Tom Davis]

Nice one Greg! Electric!

Tom

[multiweb]

Nice pic Greg - lovely colors and very sharp details. Bit of noise and hot pixels though. Looks like you've rushed the processing a tad? Top shot nonetheless. :thumbsup:

[Remus]

Very nice image. top notch!

[gregbradley]

Thanks Trevor. I have a few more of the Vela area from the 3 nights.



Thanks Alex. The TEC180 is a beautiful scope to work with.



Thanks Ron.





That's amazing how you do that Bert. Thanks for the maps I feel more oriented now.



Full frame dude. The PL16803 is a nice camera. The Apogee U16M was good too but the slow cooling time and weaker cooling was annoying. The FLI has a quieter shutter, faster downloads, even less noisy electronics and of course the strong cooling. On this camera about 51C below ambient. It will be a bit less than you are used to with yr 11002 as of course that chip is half the mass.



Thank you for compliment.



Thank you



Thanks Frank.





As always it could do with more exposure time. Ha I think is the main weak link and it was 1x1 binning. I think 2x2 would have been better.
5 hours total and its pushed a bit. I can probably smooth it out a bit more.

I will have another go at the processing and smooth it out more and see if that turns out better.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Yes I think the ProLine16803 is going to be a great camera - I am reluctant to sing the praises of anything now before I actually use it ala the ASA :mad2:..of course I have used the ProLine platform already so I guess I have a good idea of just how good it should be :D. The 16803 chips in the ProLines are returning read noise levels of less than 6 electrons, pretty amazing huh?..Hope mine does too :prey: I remember Wolfgang Promper felt he nearly didn't need dark frames! I was aware that the super cooling levels I get with the 11002 chip in the ProLine will be unobtainable with the bigger 16803 but any delta T greater than 50C will be acceptable then I should be able to run at -25C in summer and -35C in winter (two dark sets instead of the only one I use now :P)

Mike

[Doomsayer]

A great field for sure Greg. I've been wondering how the 16803 was going. The Vela SNR often seems to have poor chart coverage. The Uranometria V2 atlas is pretty good but it generally just maps the GUM nebs. Hard to beat the UK schmidt plates if you are old school.
Maybe a few deep frames with a good camera lens (Hasselblad?) might solve the problem for tracking its extent.

I'm looking forward to going deep in this area as well with a 'wide' lens. I have a Nikon & Hasselblad adapter for the PL11002M ready to go (I have a collection of old 'Blad gear, still used occasionally). This combo would vignette the 16803 a fair bit because of the Nikon small throat but it might be possible to get a custom adapter.

guy

[DavidU]

Very nice Sir Greg ! I can't wait for the Sidonio with 2x2 binned Ha.

[marco]

Nice Shot Greg, even if I am not a big fan of SII/Ha/OIII imaging (I prefer more "natural" colour renderings). Pity it is a bit noisy, I suppose you had to stretch a lot to get out all that signal!

I am working as well on a mosaic on this part of the sky, so far I have half of the data I need to complete, I hope to be lucky with the weather for next new moon..



Mike, I am using mine at -30C in Coonabarabra with no problems even in summer time (of course, during the night). Expect at least -55C/-60C from your camera. Noise is almost un-noticeable, you will be very surprised by that!

Marco

[gregbradley]

Thanks Guy.

I have used a Canon 200mm F2.8 to image this area with an STL11. Also a Canon 85mm and a Nikon 50mm.
I got some coma when the aperture was wide open but if you stop down 2 stops it reduces a lot to acceptable levels.

I imagine whatever works with the 11002 would work with the 16803 as it is basically a squared off 11002.


Greg.



Yes don't count your pixels before they are exposed!

Greg.



I think also sum combine isn't the best as it leaves too many little artifacts like cosmic rays for which these sensitive cameras seem to always get several.

greg.

[gregbradley]

Well here is another version that is more muted and less stretched and far less noise and grain:

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/122386593

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

OK, that would be a nicer cooling level for my liking too. These big chips in the ProLine architecture have such low read noise that being able to cool lower is deffinitely an advantage. I want a camera that is read noise limited and with such low read noise you need great cooling (preferrably without the need for water) to take advantage of it :thumbsup:

Mike

[marco]

There are several nice analysis on this camera made by Richard Crisp in his website. In reality there is another limiting factor called RBI on this large chips that could limit the exposure. That depends on temperature too. With about -30C and subframes of 10 minutes the camera is indeed limited by the (little) read noise, that's why I am using this standard subexposure as upper limit. Sometime I use lower subframes if *very* bright stars are in the field to recover a little more color information on stars core for the final processing.

If you want to use the camera with longer subexposures than you need to cool much more to have the image read noise limited.

Clear Skies
Marco

[multiweb]

now that is superb! :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Thanks Marc.

Greg.

[jase]

Latest version has the goods Greg. Nice work indeed. Hope your permanent obs is coming along well too. :thumbsup:

I do laugh at this thread however. Seems like a p***ing contest. Has anyone actually tried the Apogee U16M with D9 cooling? Minus 75 below without water reticulation my friends! Seriously though, what are the gains. One can do accurate work operating at -10 with good darks. Moot point. Lets not get too carried away with equipment shall we. Its what you do with it that counts.:)

[strongmanmike]

:lol:...seems you are happy to join in the errr? p***ing (?) contest too though Jase ;)

Hmm? wonder why Apogee bothered if -10C is good enough :question:

No point having super cooling if the read noise is high ;)

...how are ya anyway Jase? good to have the Jennings frankness back :thumbsup:...anyway back to Gregs nice image Ooops

[Peter Ward]

Muddy background and cyan casts near the top of the frame. The object of interest is lost in the frame...ie more FL (via a barlow) would have helped quite a bit.

Sure I'm picky, but playing with A-league gear I would have expected better... :shrug:

Many of the acquisition aspects handled really well....but gotta say, the processing side needs some work...

[Bassnut]

Top work Greg, its been a while ;).

Dont often see the Vela here, nice change.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Mike. By the way I think I p...... furthest!!! hehehe.

Greg



Thanks Fred. Yes it has been quite a while. I even have some old M42 narrowband I have still to process from Oct lat year!