Thors Helmet 8 hours CDK

[gregbradley]

I took this a while ago during a period of clear weather.

This has some SII, Ha as well as LRGB in it. I took some O111 as well but it does not add much and so I did not include it.

Planewave CDK 17, Paramount ME, FLI Proline 16803, Astrodon Gen 11 filters.

SII Ha LRGB 50 60 210 40 50 50.

http://upload.pbase.com/image/132908177

I made a breakthrough in how I do flat fields with this setup and this enabled me to process this image. The original processing was not bringing out the detail due to vignetting and poor flats.

Greg.

Greg.

[Octane]

Greg,

That is just sensational.

BUT, you have been very heavy handed with your masking -- there is very clear delineation between boundaries. Time to Gaussian blur or deal with the "seams" in a different way.

H

[troypiggo]

That's just epic :jawdrop: :prey2:

[peter_4059]

That has clearly set the benchmark. Awesome image.

[Peter Ward]

Hummm...sorry to say it Greg but there is something not quite right here.

The sharp diagonal features I have never seen in *any* other images of Thor's Helmet, amateur or Pro, hence I strongly suspect they are processing or gradient artifacts rather than real structures...

There is some great data there, you just need to tease it out.

[strongmanmike]

My first impression was wow, then I noticed those straight edged triangular shapped sun ray like red swaths and thought huh? :question:...they look strange.

If they are not processing artifacts then this is a spectacular image, even if they are, bah who casres, still looks good :lol:

Again I love the grand scale of your presentations with this new scope, real imapct there.

Mike

[allan gould]

A searchlight in the night. Just love the dramatic effect and a superb photo. Artifact or not - its a great image.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Peter.



Yes there was an error in several of the masks. It got painted when it should not have. I've corrected it now and it looks more normal.



I did a repro of it as Humi picked up the problem with some of the masks. They had an error in them. There are some diagonal lines up in the top blue area of nebula. I think this is streaks from a bright star out of the FOV or at least I suspect they are. I have since flocked the shroud of my secondary and Planewave are making me a secondary shroud with a baffle machined in. Stray light reflections from bright out of field stars has been a weak point with this scope. Its really the only problem I have had with it so if the flocking or new shroud helps there it will be great.



Thanks Allan. The repro is still dramatic I hope.

Greg.

[John Hothersall]

Thats a fine result, did not think this had much S2 in it, I got quite a bit of O3 in my attempt.

John.

[strongmanmike]

Ah huh! they were imposters, I knew it :P

Mike

[renormalised]

Excellent work, Greg:)

[Fabiomax]

What a beautiful image! beautiful colors and shades.
Cheers,
Fabiomax

[Ric]

Blimey, what an awesome image.

Excellent work Greg

[alan meehan]

Good show Greg stunning shot,glad to see you worked out your flat fields well done
AL

[telecasterguru]

Pretty fine image with lots of depth.

Frank

[Lester]

Very nice image Greg showing the outer regions well. Thanks for the view.

[prokyon]

Wow, such a difficult object and so many details and nice colours. :thumbsup:

Cheers

Werner

[gregbradley]

Thanks John. Yes SII was quite detailed. I had the SII filter in by mistake mislabelling it as Ha. They look similar as filters physically. OIII had the 2 arms a bit and nothing else in mine (assuming of course I labelled the filters correctly!! I must get a 7 position filter wheel at some point.



Yeah, hopefully fixed now. I was also told by one guy the carbon fibre struts can cause reflections and to put black material over the ones above the mirror.



Thanks for that. I was happy to get the image as it wasn't looking too promising at the start before I worked out a good flat routine.



Thanks Fabio. Cheers mate,



Thanks Ric. It probably is my most involved processing on any image to date. A few new techniques came in handy.



Yes the flats sorted are vital with this scope more so than any other I have used. Without a good flats routine you'll be throwing out a lot of images with this big 16803 chip.



Thanks Frank. The 17 inches of aperture really gets a lot of depth. I am pleased that aperture did rule in this instance.



Thanks Lester. They came out better than I expected.



Thanks Werner. It is a difficult object being so dim.

Greg.

[AG Hybrid]

Very Impressive.

[Peter Ward]

Ah! Now the painted masks are gone, that's much better! :thumbsup:

[gary]

Hi Greg,

Jaw droppingly good!

Best regards

Gary

[icytailmark]

that looks fantastic that must of taken a many weeks to do that image.

[richardo]

Didn't see the first posted image but this looks really very nice Greg!

I can see the 'out of image' bright star's reflections casting it shards of blue light at the top centre... but I think some slight 'imperfections' do make for an original image... almost like your own signature to an image:)

Looks like your flats are working well!

Be interesting to see how well the shroud and baffle work out for this scope...

All the best
Rich

[CoolhandJo]

Lots of nebulosity I have never seen before!

[Leonardo70]

Greg very very nice shot .... impressive

Leo

[gregbradley]

Thanks for that.



Yes too many layers and masks and some inverted some painted. I painted an inverted mask.



Cheers Gary.



It probably was given the cloudy weather in between imaging sessions.



I reduced the effect of this flare quite a bit but it still shows a bit. I wonder if I can get rid of it altogether.



Thanks. It did come up better than I expected.



Thanks very much Leo.

Greg.

[spearo]

excellent FOV!
frank

[gregbradley]

Thanks Frank. The big chip helps a lot with that.

Greg.

[multiweb]

Nice rendition of a faint one. Loads of neb I've never seen before. :thumbsup: I was expecting sharper details though given the aperture.

[TrevorW]

Greg I'm sorry but I'm going against the norm on this one, the histogram just doesn't look quite right and there appears to be a gradient in there.

Also appears maybe a tad to much noise reduction has over smoothed the result.

I'll probably be shot for saying this but I'd go back to the drawing board on this one with that much data I'm sure you could do a lot better

No offence meant just my point of view take it or leave it

Cheers

[gregbradley]

Thanks Marc.

I think the extra aperture and longer focal length highlights the deficiencies in the seeing more than the shorter focal length APOs that seem sharp a lot of the time.

As I recall seeing wasn't too good but clear nights are so rare you take what you get.

I sharpened it a bit more just for you.

Greg.

[Stevec35]

Nice detail Greg but it doesn't quite have the "natural" look that I've seen in some Thor's helmet images. I don't rate this an easy object though.

Cheers

Steve

[gregbradley]

There is some SII and Ha data in there so its not a straight LRGB. So as a result its not 100% typical and not quite a narrowband shot either.

Greg.

[Tom Davis]

That is a stunner!! What amazing extended detail in such a short amount of exposure time.

...and clear weather... what is that? :shrug:

-Tom

[batema]

It is an amazing object and your image looks fantastic. Congratulations.

Mark

[gregbradley]

Thanks very much Tom. Much appreciated.



Cheers Mark.

[SkyViking]

Wow that's a magnificent image! Well done and nicely processed. It looks very 3D to me and a very deep field. Thanks for sharing :)

[gregbradley]

Thanks very much Rolf.

Greg.

[multiweb]

Fair enough. I almost forgot about the (bad)weather. It's just hanging there. Haven't imaged in months either.

[gregbradley]

Last night looked like it was going to be clear so I setup only to shut up again. This moring its crystal clear. The clear sky Gods obviously waited until after I went to bed. They are sneaky.

Tonight may be good.

Greg.

[sjastro]

Great image Greg.

Regards

Steven

[marc4darkskies]

Top shot Greg! Nicely done!

Cheers, Marcus

[gregbradley]

Thanks Steven.



Cheers Marcus. You must be getting closer to first light with the PME eh?

Greg.