Running Man Nebula CDK17

[gregbradley]

After the heavy weather of the last few days last night was gorgeous.

Totally clear all night and reasonable seeing.

I caught up on a few images.

Orion now is rising and is quite high in the sky in the early morning.

Planewave CDK17, Paramount ME, FLI Proline 16803, Astrodon Gen 11 LRGB filters.

LRGB 30 30 20 20.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/129483539/large

Greg.

[desler]

Wow Greg, you've really got that system working well, a very nice crisp image, that proline really sucks in the data, well done.


Darren

[h0ughy]

looks great and the colours are very nice - but there seems to be a horizontal line in the middle?

[gregbradley]

Thanks Darren. Its nearly there. The camera is working very well

Greg.




I assumed it was the object but I looked again and there are several that radiate towards something offscreeen. I think it is glare from one of the bright Orion stars out of the image. I am having trouble with glares from bright stars out of the image. I am looking at various solutions to this. One is to check the adapter for any bright parts and paint it a flatter black. Another is possibly flocking the interior of the baffle tube. Another is installing a knife edge baffle to the baffle tube ( it may already have some?).

Greg.

[multiweb]

Superb shot Greg. Those colours and stars are to die for! Just found it a little soft when I first opened it. Just personal preference. I'm probably used to see this area sharpened and saturated to the max. Top work. :thumbsup:

[TrevorW]

I like !!!

[strongmanmike]

That's beautiful Greg, lovely simple soft image and I agree with Marc, the stars are perfect. Yeh could do with a little sharpening maybe or less smoothing, as the case may be, but it is a fine image as is. The images from the 17" CDK are really showing great imposing image scale, other large RC's etc just don't seem to demonstrate this effect..? Perhaps it is the way they are processed or even posted..? :question: although I see a similar effect with Mike Berthon Jones images done with his 12.5" CDK..?

Mike

[gregbradley]

Thanks Marc,

I don't think I can get it any sharper with inducing too much noise and the short total exposure will show. More exposure would take more sharpening.
Like a few other images I am doing I will add more exposure time as weather is clear. I have extra data now for the Corona Australis, NGC300 images I posted.



Thanks Trevor. Its an interesting object and every year I intend to image it and often don't get around to it for some reason.

[dcalleja]

Its an outstanding image Greg. Have to be be happy with that setup too!!

[gregbradley]

Thanks Mike.

The lack of total exposure time limits the amount of sharpening I can do to it. I will add more exposure time to it like I have for some other images.
Clear weather has been so rare lately and it is still quite low in the sky.

I like the image scale but I am having trouble with bright star flares
just out of the image. I have to track down where they are coming from over the next week or so. But overall I like the CDK17. I think I'll be able to handle these flares and they are only a problem occassionally.

I need to make sure I turn the fans on early to let it equalise as you can't get a sharp focus with more than about .5C difference between the primary and ambient temperature. It takes maybe 2 hours to get there. Perhaps a little AC unit may help.

Greg.

[Lester]

Top image Greg, framed beautifully. Thanks for the view. All the best.

[peter_4059]

That's a great image Greg. I've never seen that much detail in the dust clouds in an image of the running man before. Is that the full fov or a crop with the new gear?

Peter

[Octane]

So beautiful, Greg.

Another celestial landscape.

H

[DavidU]

A stunner. Well done.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Lester.



That is almost entirely full frame with only a very small crop to get rid of stacking edges. So probably about 95%.



Thanks Humi. It is a great part of the sky.



Thanks a lot David.

[Paul Haese]

Nice Greg. Smooth detail and nice contrast. I wonder if some Ha will have an impact on this image. Not much red in this region so I suppose not but those dust lanes might contain a lot of Ha.

[Martin Pugh]

Great image Greg, and such short exposure time - I guess that's what 17" of aperture at f6.8 brings you. I agree that it could do with a tad more sharpening.

cheers
Martin

[Tom Davis]

Excellent!!

Tom

[bartman]

Absolutely beautiful!
However....hehehehhe
I STILL CANT SEE A RUNNING MAN!http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/eyepopping.gif
all I can see is ( apart from the beautiful pic), is a Goanna.....
I ps'd this...
Hope you dont mind.................
Bartman

[strongmanmike]

Very good Bart, nice to see you are monitoring things so well :lol:

[marc4darkskies]

That's a really nice image Greg. :thumbsup: You've brought out the subtle beauty very nicely. I see what you mean about the reflections though - definitely need to fix that. Although, for very bright stars just out of field I'd expect to see some glare. With my Horsey I had to process out several lens flare looking artefacts ... and my Tak is baffled to the hilt!

Cheers, Marcus

[avandonk]

It is a really nice image Greg. The trouble is with 17'' of aperture the bright stars are massively overexposed. You are a bit better off at f/6.8 as compared to f/10 by about a factor of four in the ratio of nebula brightness compared to star brightness.

Sharpening massively over exposed stars is a waste of time. What you need to do is use short exposures to delineate the brighter stars and then blend by HDR.

Here is an example of what HDR can do for bright star sizes. 600k

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2010_10/hdrm42.gif

Here is your image compared with the same area taken with the 300mm lens 1.6MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2010_10/grb1.gif

Note my bright stars are at about the same size as yours!

Bert

[bartman]

Maybe a Long Neck Turtle......:sadeyes:
Still cant see a man running......
Bartman:shrug:

[gregbradley]

Ha on this object doesn't look the best. It tends to make it more like a blob. The dust would come out anyway with extra exposure time so I'll see how that goes. Its no trouble to take some Ha once it is higher up in the sky rather than 3 in the morning!



Thanks Martin.



Thanks Tom.



That's funny. Maybe we should call it the Goanna chasing a long neck turtle nebula!



Thanks Marcus. I have started chasing down the reflections. I see the baffle tube already has 3 baffles in it. Also the tube is threaded to reduce reflections. I think the first place to start is the adapter. The mirror also has an aperture ring around it which is a good thing too.
I had a bad reflection with my AP140 once and it was from the adapter and that fixed it. I agree off axis bright stars may be hard to handle.



Thanks Bert. I'll check into that. Stars don't always oversaturate at 10 mins at the F6.8 but this object has several quite bright stars.
Very cool comparison before and after and that overlay.


Greg.

[marco]

Very nice Greg, what is amazing is the amount of data you got with so little integration.. amazing what big sizes can do!

Clear Skies
Marco

[Hagar]

Well Greg what can I say: Absolutely stunning.

[gregbradley]

Yes the large aperture is a luxury.



Thanks Doug. Some images when they download you know will work out well. Others not so much. This one looked good in the intial downloads.

Greg.

[TheDecepticon]

It is a very lovely image.:thumbsup:

The CDK and the Proline work well together. :eyepop:

Just a bit over smooth for me, but what would I know!:rolleyes:

:):)

[gregbradley]

Thanks. It is a bit oversmooth as it lacks exposure time really. Another 2 hours will bring this one up. It really was only available at about 3am and you can only image at the moment until about 5am.

So next no moon weeks I'll add some more and I can sharpen it then.

If you try to sharpen an image with not enough exposure it seems to only highlight noise.

Greg.