NGC3576 and surroundings

[multiweb]

Here's the first pic I processed from Tuesday night at Ilford. 2h in 2min subs with the ED80 and QHY8. Seeing was excellent. Looks like I'll have to tweak the flattener spacing a bit especially obvious in the blue channel. These nebulae are very faint and burried in a very busy part of the milkyway so it was hard to process them out of the starry background.

I had some minor glitch with tracking and sudden random jumps in RA and DEC. While packing in the morning I discovered that the camera rotator on the P-FLAT IV was loose and the whole assembly was falling out sideways as the mount was tracking... live and learn. :lol:

Hope you enjoy the shot. There's a big 1:1 full field here (http://www.multiweb.com.au/astro/ngc3576_ED80_lf.jpg) [7.2MB] . As always thanks for looking and tips welcome :thumbsup:

[CoolhandJo]

Serious star field you have got their Marc! Very deep. Nice :)

[strongmanmike]

A lovely swath of sky

Nicely done Marc, looks very natural.

Mike

[marc4darkskies]

Nice one Marc! Spot on neb colours too!

Cheers, Marcus

[duncan]

Hi Mark,
Certainly is a busy part of the sky. A great shot to show people just what our Milky Way is made up of.
Cheers,
Duncan:thumbsup:

[spearo]

Big and wide
nice
frank

[multiweb]

Thanks Paul. Yes loads of stars. Almost like noise.


Thanks Mike :thumbsup:. Glad you liked the process. I did spend a bit of time on it and too many RGB stars is a bit new to me. I don't have this problem in Ha :lol:


Thanks Marcus. Yeah I wasn't sure at first as one started to turn redder than the other then I googled a bit and that seemed right. :thumbsup:


Thanks Duncan. Certainly is very crowded in the area. While the scope was imaging I was walking around the house and I could cast shadows with my arms on the ground from all the light cast by the milkyway. There was absolutely no sound. Not even the slightest breeze. Dead quiet but from the occasional roo stomping around. The sky was totally still. No twinkling. Freaky. As I said before the best night I've had since I've been in the hobby. That's because it was my birthday on that night. :lol: I must have a lucky star. So put the next star party April 13th ;)


Thanks Frank. :thumbsup:

[TrevorW]

Great widefield Marc

[SkyViking]

Great image Marc, it certainly is a busy field! Very well done and nice natural looking colours.

[Paul Haese]

Heaps of stars. Smooth nebula data.

[gregbradley]

Nice shot Marc. Yes late night "discoveries" about your gear are great fun:question:

Greg.

[richardo]

Holi dooli Marc,
the 7.2 mb version is insane!
Yes I like the natural look that your processing has brought to this epic fov.

Has a bit of everything in it.

Even if the stars are elongated slightly to the diagonals, still an impressive image!

Well done!

Rich

[multiweb]

Thanks Trev. :thumbsup:

Thanks mate. Colours came out better than what I expected. I got lucky on the processing this time around.


Thanks Paul. Yes too many stars. Had to to a slight deconv in the raw individual channels and reduce further in PS. Very time consuming.


:lol: Yeah that's how you learn though. Just glad it didn't totally ruin the shots.


Thanks Rich. Still a bit of tweaking needed with that FF and next time I won't forget to secure it properly. :P

[Hagar]

Very nice Marc, Talk about a busy star field. The nebula colour looks very good. If taken from here it would have several planes and satelites through the middle. The joys of dark sites off the beaten track.

[multiweb]

Thanks Doug. Yeah I know what you mean :lol: I got a few criss cross too but with 2min subs and the shear number of them it was easy to reject. The idea was that on 2min subs also the stars won't bloat as much. Although I haven't tried any longer with the P-Flat in RGB yet. Blue channel seems to smear more than green or red. Will try to catch some Ha on this one to blend a bit in the nebs see if I can deepen the reds around.