Another M83

[Bassnut]

Hi Guys

Excellent weather conditions for the last week in Sydney allowed quite a bit of imaging time, and with the moon down, thought id try LRGB again.

Was a bit of a shock, its been a while since ive tried LRGB, processing is so hard with heavy light pollution, narrowband is much easier, processing wise anyway :P.

I never do flats for NB, just dont need em, but did for this image, and discovered a nasty little problem I havent even heard of before. AO dances the image around so that flats dont fit that well (taken with AO off), your left with halos around where filter dust donuts are on the flats. They seemed to dissappear (or get hidden) somewhat during processing, but never the less a disturbing discovery.

Anyhoo... M83 for your pleasure at my site home page here (http://sites.google.com/site/fredsastro/), with gaud awefull stars and next to no colour in them, I hate those bugggers, just gave up (well, M83 would look pretty daft without them I guess :lol:). Humies recent M83 got the star colour smick, perhaps I could nick them.........:rolleyes:.

Im happy with outer extension, but the noise was a bit severe.

LRGB :Lum 5hrs, 30 off 10 min subs bin 1 , RGB 50mins each, 10 off 5 min subs bin2

AO was cranking at about 3 hz. Interestingly, it was working hard when I started at about 10pm, and settled right down as the night wore on, and it got nearer the zenith. The AO operation gives a good indication of seeing.

[Octane]

Fred,

Oh, my goodness.

That's just awesome!

Who cares about the stars -- look at all that gobsmacking detail in the core. Yowza!

One day. One day!

H

[DavidU]

Mighty effort Fred !Super:thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Great shot Fred. It seems to show that the galaxy is actually slightly at an angle to us. Other images don't reveal that.

You've got a bad gradient in the background though. Top half is very green and bottom half is too blue.

By the way Fred, how large is the corrected image circle from the 12 inch ACF?

Greg.

[kinetic]

Beautiful Fred,

what's with the orientation? Is that just to frame it to
taste, boy you made it hard to cross check for supernovae :)
Is it mirrored as well? I had to do a mirror and 45 tilt to get it
to match one of my Nth up images.
Lovely detail. :thumbsup:

Steve

[Bassnut]

Hehe, absolutely one day :lol:, I look forward to that day :thumbsup:.



Thanks Dave



Yes, now that its dark around my LCD, the gradient is awefull, dont know how that happened. The quick fix is only a bit better, sorry.

Gaud, I dont know what the image circle is on the ACF, but I took a 40D pic with it and the AP 0.67 reducer (I think) and it came out OK.



Thanks Steve. FITS liberator flips vertically when importing to PS for some unknown reason (I forgot to flip back), and otherwise oreientation is wherever I can find a bright guide star for the OAG AO guide cam with a rotator.

[CoolhandJo]

Wow! Look at the detail in that! f9 at 2m+ - Awsome work.

[Garyh]

Nice and in your face Fred! I like the galaxy color balance.

[Lester]

Now that is eyecatching, with detail. Thanks for the view Fred.

The scale is so close, feels like I could touch it.

[TrevorW]

Best Hydra I've seen this year well done

[telecasterguru]

Fred,

That is an awesome image. Just beautiful.

Frank

[iceman]

Now that smacked me in the face!
Superb!

[multiweb]

Not to keen on the outskirt of the pic but the central region colors and details certainly smack you in the face as previously said. AO is the way to go for long FL work. The proof is in the pudding. Top shot. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Bassnut]

Thanks guys. The smacking brightness and colour is perhaps a bit extreme, but it works :D.

Marc, yes the skirt aint flash, but its soo painfull to start again :P. I could just curve it down, but the Galaxy looses its shape then and looks a bit wonky.

[multiweb]

If you crop the center it looks like an ESA shot :)

[Ric]

Fantastic work Fred, the detail is wonderful.

[AlexN]

Indeed, some amazing detail....

I reckon image the same spot again in RGB with 5x3 min subs and layer the star colour in... Easiest way to get the colour back without doing anything too difficult or drastic.

[TrevorW]

Fred if you want a quick fix too the star colours, I would magic lasso the galaxy then select inverse then increase saturation, works for me

Cheers

[marc4darkskies]

What?!! RGB?!! You OK Fred? :D;) Very nice shot mate!

Colours are not too much although the transition to dark sky is a bit abrupt and a I see a bit of green in there.

Don't give up on the stars - there are plenty of ways to isolate them and give 'em some TLC.

Cheers, Marcus

[Paul Haese]

Star aside this scale looks great. I can see the gradient too but it is not too distracting Fred.

[Bassnut]

Sigh, yes, I know, croping the crap, abrupt transitions, gradients (I dunno, crap flats?, I hate flats), no colour, deliberately blured stars (to hide hideous artifacts), why do ppl bother with RGB, its such a pain, I deserved a hiding right there with this image.

And I tried selecting out the galaxy and boosting saturation on the stars. Doesnt work, cause there just isnt any colour in the RGB flats!. The RGB subs are just awefull. I think the smaking colour stretch on the galaxy saturated the RGB subs to max on each=white.

So, I should select and stretch the stars less at the start of course, but I broke the golden rule, and croped early in PS so its very hard to add another layer to start star processing again with the original sub stack, so basically its all back to the beginning from scratch.

Im over it, ill save a full Sid for a rainy day I think.

Anyway, thanks for you kind words never the less, the galaxy itself was Ok at least...........hang on, I could just delete all the stars outside the galaxy,mmmmmmmmm.

[spearo]

You have to admit the colors are very bright and the inside of the galaxy reveal great lanes.
I like it for the color effect
frank