The Pavo Galaxy

[strongmanmike]

Here is the second image from last Friday.

A total of 11 hrs for the LRGB shot and 4.5hrs for the deep negative.

Please click on the image that opens at the link below and you can have a swim around the full size 100% res image looking at hundreds of background galaxies and take a look at the deep 1.6deg X 1.6deg negative frame version too.

NGC 6744 (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/127364420/original)

Mike

[Octane]

Oh, my goodness.

That is one of the best galaxy images I've ever seen. Fantastic colour and incredible detail. Can't believe the amount of background fuzzies! The one at the 7:30 PM position is beautiful.

Well done, Mike!

H

[luigi]

Fantastic!
I', speechless so my comment might not be very constructive!

[ptc]

i like it mike!

[Stevec35]

Very nice as usual Mike. Certainly a great NGC 6744. The only minor thing I would say is that there is a fair bit of colour noise in the background (predominantly red) which you could probably minimize to make the shot even better.

Cheers

Steve

[multiweb]

Top shot Mike. Beautiful details and colors. A lot to peek around that field. :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

A superb image Mike of the queen of the southern galaxies. Its my favourite galaxy.
I like the colour balance you got with this galaxy which I think is a bit hard to achieve. My initial thought of the background though was it looked a bit brownish rather than your usual neutral grey. It may be hard to adjust and maintain the excellent colour balance of the galaxy though.

Did you take any Ha of it? You seemed to catch some of the Ha areas anyway. It does image quite well in Ha and enhances the core and Ha areas.

I'm amazed you get round stars like that, yet you setup each time newly and polar align. You have that procedure down pat.
Perhaps I gave up on using polar alignment scopes for our dim southern pole area too easily.

Greg.

[DavidU]

That's a superb work Mike.
I can't fault it.:thumbsup:
Except for all those nasty stars even Fred will like it.

[Paul Haese]

Lovely image Mike. Background colour is just ever so slightly magneta but overall the image is very nice. Have you done something to reduce the star sizes? I just find that the multitude of stars here is a tiny bit distracting.

Personally I would be very happy with this image and I am sure you are of a like mind. Certainly a Malin Candidate next year.

BTW this is just another advertisement for the stability of Tak mounts. Perfect stars.

[renormalised]

Great shot, Mike. The detail in the spiral arms is excellent:)

[wasyoungonce]

Stunning!

I'm just counting the background fuzzies...24 and rising!

[strongmanmike]

Hey great that you all like it :), t'was a bit of work in it, combining two data sets then getting the dynamic range, depth and colour balance acceptable.

There is a lot of super faint Milky Way cirrus dust in the field but I have suppressed it just a little in the final narrower field LRGB as it was maskerading as gradients a little too much so I turned it down. The general patchy softness in the colour version is the cirrus, more noticably on the 16803 chip full frame negative version (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/127365096/original)

As for the background...yes well, the problem'o here is that I push the data to its limits and the residule colour noise is a balancing act. Most methods I know of to reduce it will affect the tiny faint fuzzies too. In the full frame full res version the effect is not that noticable on my computer at home or at work but on my bosses screen it is more noticable, in the smaller version it is basically invisible on all three screens :shrug:...so I am running that close to the adge - Astroimager and noise thrill seeker! :P

Thanks again guys appreciate the feedback.

Mike

[strongmanmike]

A

Firstly thanks Greg, glad you like it.

You have it in one, it was about compromise for me, I really wanted the galaxy to look delicate and pretty but still vibrant because I think that is the look that suits this particular girl. The background was a slight compromise but in the end I didn't think it a huge issue and so far have run it as is....never to late to do a Sidonio of course :P



No, no Ha, I am considering collecting some next time...we'll see.



Yeh, but you know the excellence of the NJP don't you...? man the autoguiding, even piggybacked and imaging at 1300mm FL is sensational even in pretty poor conditions, it is like a patriot missile at times



Cheers Paulie

only DDP sharpening on the initial median combined stack. As for the stars, well, I didn't put'em all there...FRED! :lol:



Dunno about that, maybe my uncalibrated screen is hiding the colour noise but his will accentuate it :lol:.....:rolleyes:



I can't fault the NJP in this regard, consistent sub arc sec autoguiding, even in tough conditions, is worth millions :)

[TheAstroGuy]

NOW THAT IS A GREAT GALAXY SHOT

I love the little spiral at 7:30 too, it s a real winner this shot, lovely colours, pinpoint stars and great detail in the arms of the spiral itself.

Nice work

Regards

Shane

[Scorpius51]

Awesome! Love galaxies!

Nice work Mike.:thumbsup:

John

[jase]

A very visually pleasing image Mike. I like the structure you've obtained in the spiral arms, but I don't like the background noise level as others have highlighted. There is a difference between galactic cirrus / integrated flux and colour noise blotches. Even subtly desaturating the background (as opposed to a full-blown colour noise reduction algorithm) would see a marked improvement to this scene.

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Jase, I basically agree with your assesment but when I did the background desaturation tweek it just didn't look right :shrug:, as I said I kind of run around the edge of perfection really, I have a hang up with losing faint galaxies + my eyes tell me things :screwy:..I was processing this at 2am+ this morning = darkened room bright screen etc ...actually it is remarkable that it isn't a piece of crap really :lol:. I am at work at the moment and it looks fine on this screen in a fluro lit room, background blotches need very close scrutiny to make out and a casual glance misses them all together... but I'll have a play with the background at some stage :thumbsup:

Mike

[richardo]

Ah yes, one of my favourite galaxies too!
Subtle colours, wispy arms, and quite a few surrounding galaxies to keep one looking.
It certainly is an interesting one to get a good colour balance in the galaxy, especially if you have to fight gradients which tend to throw balance out the window after it's sorted.
You did a good job with it!
And as already mentioned, the speckled background.... but you're on to it.

I've had my lum on this one sitting waiting for a clear night since last week to get some colour, but the weather has other ideas at the mo.


Look forward to your sid.... think this will finish it off nicely!

All the best
Rich

[Bassnut]

Again, a huge range of star colours, you capture star colour quite well I must say, an ABG cam helps there. I dont think desaturating backgrounds on yr images would work well, given you like a fairly hi level and slight colour bias (which is OK BTW, seems to always look good). Lots of background galaxies there, shows carefull (not overdone) processing and hi res.

Despite the noise, its a natural looking pic (not zoom friendly tho), well done.

[strongmanmike]

Cheers John, shane and Rich :thumbsup:

Ok ok sigh...I have done a Sidonio :rolleyes:..back ground desaturated a bit ...not totally convinced it was that necessary :question: but I am a victum of peer pressure :lol:

Fred, you are an idiot (term of endearment :whistle:) read the original post properly ya git and you will see that if you click on the image that opens you will be able to access a full size full res image :rolleyes: :screwy:..err I am :drink:at the mo...:D

Mike

[Alchemy]

Another sidonio image, where do you get the clear skies? Great image of a fairly low surface brightness galaxy, you've managed to get more color than most others I have seen.

Clive

[Bassnut]

Listen, punk :thumbsup:, I dun that, so then I get hi res colour noise, OK :P ;) :hi::stupid::lol2:

[strongmanmike]

Noise?? I'll give you NOISE :mad2:...you plastic imager

:lol:

[Garyh]

Looks very impressive Mike! Nice detail in the arms and stars nicely saturated. Background a tad noisy but when you want to get all that faint detail, it`s hard to avoid!
Done 5 hours with the DSLR of this, shall be interesting how noisy mine will turn out :lol:

[Bassnut]

plastic has less noise, duh. Crayons are solid, creative, usefull little buggers. Any questions ? :).

[strongmanmike]

Please don't be alarmed anyone Fred and I do love each other :love: :evil2:

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Gazza...finally a non crayon user...some sanity prevails :rolleyes: :lol:

Yes will be interesting :thumbsup:

Mike

[mill]

That picture looks superb, but that top left bright star is missing a diffraction spike :rofl::rofl:

Just kidding, excellent work as always Mike :thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Martone

The field around this galaxy is great so I think I may look to add some more data here so that is is all from the 16803 chip.

Yes... that star was bothering Fred too just becasue well..it was a star?? :shrug: :screwy: so I did consider removing it just to make him happy buuuut bah... he can have another Sutho :lol:

Thanks

[alexch]

I am speachless! The colours in the galaxy and the faint background stars are simply outstanding.

Cheers,
Alex

[Phil Hart]

superb.. after no doubt a lot of work, that is one sweet system you've got humming along very nicely there mike. top shelf imaging! :thumbsup:

[DavidU]

Mike V Fred :poke:

[renormalised]

OK Children....scopes at 10 paces, no peeking and don't turn around till I count to 20:):P

1...2...3............

[strongmanmike]

Cool, glad you liked it Harty :thumbsup:

The whole process from packing the car (six times :rolleyes:) to finally displaying the image is quite frankly very tiring..I think I should get back into training as it's starting to hurt :sadeyes:. Yes a fair amount of work indeed...and it may not have ended even...I'd like to grab more Lum and RGB with the PL16803 :eyepop:... :screwy:...I recon this FOV (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/127365096/original) in full deep colour high res would look pretty specky :D

[strongmanmike]

It is a unique and somewhat difficult galaxy to process and present as it is rather subtle and delicate in structure with a low surface brightness.

Glad you liked it

Mike

[strongmanmike]

Fred fixes wheelchairs for a living so if he hammers me at least I have a mode of transport home ...I suspect however the only hammering we would do would be getting hammered by drinking... :whistle::drink: :P

[marco]

wow, I was almost missing this one! Extremely well done Mike, your are squeezing every photon out your ccd :)

Marco

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Marco, speaking of squeezing every photon.. those 300mm pentax shots of yours do a bit of squeezing of their own! :thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

Verrrry nice Mike! :thumbsup: A bit of noise? Maybe, but it doesn't detract from the impact of the image.

Funny, you beat me to the punch - we must have been imaging the same subject at the same time :lol:. Only just started processing my version though.

Cheers, Marcus

[seeker372011]

late to join the appreciative chorus...but I did enjoy looking at this fine image

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Marcus, yeh I recon some get just a bit hung up on noise at times (Err like I do on not losing faint smudges :lol:) and generally this results in a kind of forced or panic induced plastic look or over smoothed look etc which I think looks much worse than the noise. I have always been ok with a small amount of noise as long, as you say, it doesn't detract from the overall imapct of the image, I am sure it is just a thing I have...like the propensity of a blue bias in my images too :screwy:

So your gear is back, that's great, we imaged the Orion Nebula around the same time remember so I am sure your rendition of 6744 will be pretty awesome too :thumbsup:



Thanks narayan, it is a beautiful galaxy, reminds me of a dream catcher.

Mike

[gregbradley]

Mike have you ever tried Noise Ninja? You can lassoo out the areas you don't want handled by it, even the stars if you were really tricky with Photoshop.

It does a good job and minimal smoothing.

There is a free trial. I think its a great plug in so you get the best of both worlds, keep your faint smudgies (or is that budgies?) and your noise is reduced (to some degree it is not an ultimate solution).

I did that on your image and it got rid of the noise at a slight cost of some of the dimmer stars colour saturation but not the brighter ones (that could be improved by careful masking of all the stars rather than the brighter ones that I did). It turned out well.I can post it if you wish. It didn't lose any faint fuzzies.

Greg.

[Jen]

:eyepop: WOW what a pic, lots to look at there Mike well done :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[avandonk]

We used to have a saying in CSIRO that one mans noise is another mans signal.

There are a few things happening here. In any system the noise will modulate any signal that is at about the same magnitude. Colour noise is far more visible even at lower levels. There are evolutionary reasons for this. If your superior colour vision allows you to see your prey or predator before they see you, a meal or survival was the result.

Mike's system is exquisitely sensitive and for ground based optics about as good as it gets for real resolution which is generally limited by the seeing.

Here is an animated gif I made from Mikes images. 3MB.
Click on the image to see it full size at that position.

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2010_08/ms1g.gif

Image one is from the B&W image.
Image two from the full size colour image
Image three from the full size colour image stretched to emphasise the background 'noise'.

The jpg compression would have added noise to the images I used. I also upsized the images to get back a bit of the original resolution.
See image below which was also enhanced. This also enhances the 'noise'.

If you look carefully you will see obvious signal in the B&W image that then looks like noise in the colour images.

There is noise there as there is in any image. If I cannot see noise in an image then a bit of clipping has been done and real faint signal lost.

So in the end there is no real argument just semantics as to what is noise in an image.

In order to improve our images we need to sort real signal from real noise. Not just eliminate 'noise' and lose faint signal that is real.

Oh yeah very nice image Mike.

Bert

[strongmanmike]

Thankyou Bert, finally, some soothing clasical music is injected into this noise issue :thumbsup:

Noise aversion in processing is significantly mediated by trends in how images "should" look from a popularist, conformist as well as aesthetic perspective. In the end it is often just trendy popular opinion that can prevail. A smooth image for a smooth images sake is often prefered over one that reveals faint details and structures that has a little noise. I try to run the gauntlet between the two as I like elements of both approaches :)

NOISY MIKE :lol:

[gregbradley]

I like the latest version Mike. It seems you achieved a good compromise there and is a superb image.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Cheers Greg

Ya won't beleive it but I finished off a repro (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/127364420/original) Tuesday morning right before we left for the Eureka Prize's :D :lol: and here is a hi res crop (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/127364564/original)

To repro, or not to repro...that is the question :P

Mike

[h0ughy]

nice shot and repro Mike

[gregbradley]

Very nice Mike and I think you've maxed that one out. Thats a wrap!
I personally think repros are a normal part of the game. To get it perfect first time out is a target but a repro having looked at it several more times and others noticing things you didn't is really part of the process isn't it?

Oh and by the way congrats on your runner up win in the Eureka Prize. I am sure the judging was very subjective
as you were competing against totally different types of images.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Yes agreed, repro to your hearts content I say. There is faint galactic cirrus all over this field too so while some would clip it out in the quest for a blacker background, I have left it in :thumbsup:



Thank ya kindly, the awards will be featured on Catalyst tonight 8pm.

Mike

[Chancellor]

As said several times above, absolutely stunning.
Images like yours are what inspire many people to get into imaging.

[strongmanmike]

Gee thanks a lot Jeff, I'm glad if that is the case :thumbsup:. Plenty of people inspired me along the way too, in the early days it was David Malin (the quintessential astroimaging rock star really) and amateurs like Evered Kraimer then later Tony Hallas and Philip Perkins onto more modern gurus like Wolfgang Promper and Tom Davis or even our very own Marcus Davies and Eddie Trimarchi etc (there are many more). If we can all inspire each other it is a good thing I recon :)

Cheers mate

Mike

[Omaroo]

Not bad Mike.
:D

[SkyViking]

Fantastic image Mike, I really like the colours, the details, the smoothness - it looks so natural and well balanced, yet there is exquisite detail and colouring all over, everything is just perfect. Very well done!

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Rolf, very glad you like it :thumbsup: it is a reasonably tough galaxy to image and process actually.

Mike