LMC mosaic, my deepest shot to date

[marco]

Dear all, immediately after the Small Magellanic Cloud, here I am with a shot of the larger sister :P

It is a mosaic of 4 panels that collected more than 70 (:screwy:) hours of light, through 6 filters. Indeed this was my longest project to date that took lots of nights from the beginning of 2010 through the year end. I am not sure I will embrace another project like this one, indeed the difficulty of making mosaics of large parts of the sky and managing all possible gradients of the background summed with the necessity of having almost "perfect" flats requires a lots of efforts during the imaging session and during the processing of the final mosaic. Despite the long time I spent on it the background still has several defects I was not able to correct completely, but at least the final result is, according to me at least, quite pleasant.

What I wanted to show is the original spiral shape of this galaxy, fact that can be understood from the external faint parts.

Here is the link to the main page:
http://www.glitteringlights.com/Images/deepsky/13667287_YtYhj#1232596542_po38Z-A-LB

From there you can access to different sizes, including a full screen zoomify version up to 4000x4000 pixels, highly recommended.

Clear Skies
Marco

[Octane]

Mind blown.

Just sensational.

H

[jenchris]

I give up....
I can't comprehend the magnitude of such a task.
May I touch the hem of your garment?

[mental4astro]

Magnificent!

I am most impressed. The level of detail, clarity and colour is stupendous.

Congratulations!

[multiweb]

Another corker! Well done. :thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

That's a fantastic image there Marco!! One of the best LMCs I've seen and well worth the tremendous effort you put in! Well done!!

Cheers, Marcus

[TrevorW]

Superb !!!

[OzRob]

It takes some dedication to do more than 73 hours of imaging on a single target. It's a wonderful image. I hope some of it rubs off on your neighbours....;)

[marco]

Thanks H, Jennifer, Alexander, Marc, Marcus and Trevor, I am happy you like this mosaic :thanx:



Thanks Rob, actually the sky there is very good and helps a lot in pushing up the bar of what is achievable :)

Clear Skies
Marco

[astroron]

Splendid effort Marco:thumbsup:
The best Lmc image I have I have ever seen taken with amateur equipment:eyepop:
Cheers

[gregbradley]

Wow Marco you've outdone yourself. Magnificent image. Its interesting as it shows the LMC to be an S shaped barred spiral galaxy albeit somewhat distorted.

Rogelio Andreo move over, we've got Marco!

Greg.

[Leonardo70]

WOWWWWWWW

Congrats Marco...

[Stevec35]

EXcellent work Marco!

Steve

[FlashDrive]

What can I say ... Just Outstanding .... What Talent you have...:thumbsup:

[DavidU]

Unbelievable image ! You are one dedicated imager.

[strongmanmike]

Well...that's a visual feast Marco, I enjoyed the meal, from the pappardelle HII to the polpette OIII bubbles, yumissimo :thumbsup:

Mike

[JohnH]

What a materpiece; straight to the pool room with that one. Or as you put it "quite pleasant" which makes you a master of the understatemet!

[dugnsuz]

Excellent image and superb outcome for such a labour of love.
Well done Marco
Bravo...
Doug

[suma126]

wow amazing shot :)

[richardo]

Seriously insane Marco, this is an epic undertaking and an epic result...:eyepop:

Gotta try an apod with this.. surely it'll get the vote!

Top of the shelf:thumbsup:

Rich

[SkyViking]

That is easily the most impressive image of the LMC I have ever seen. It's simply a joy to swim around in the full screen zoomable version. And what a marathon effort at 73 hours! Outstanding work.

Also interesting to note how many bubble shaped nebulae there actually are in the LMC.

[Phil Hart]

you are one crazy guy. that's incredible dedication to the cause and another amazing result.

so tell us more about your 'flat' adventures. are you using sky flats? you're operating remotely with a wide field so i don't know if you have much other option? what is the main software you're using to blend and adjust the mosaic?

Phil

[Enrique]

Outstanding!!!!!!

Enrique

[irwjager]

That's absolutely sensational. Your dedication shows in your work and you're shaping up to becoming one of 'The Greats'!

[marco]

Thanks to all for the very kind words !



:lol: good to know I didn't get a "pasticcio" ;)



Hi Phil, I am using the flipflat and taking flats to the limit of my camera linearity to get the highest possible s/n (i.e. my flats go to 45K ADU)
Unfortunately the main problem is the natural skyglow, despite the location I am shooting from is very dark and free from light pollution, the natural skyglow on large field has different color response as you get closer to the horizon. In other words, on a 12 degree per side FOV you have different colors of the background and, since the altitude of the object changes during the exposures and not all exposures were take with the object in the same alt/azimuth location (not even during the shots using same filter) when you sum up the image and stretch a lot you get always the background not completely even..

As processing software, after the image calibration done with Maxim), I use only PS. As must-have plug-ins I have GradientXterminator (couldn't do without) and Noise Ninja (very useful). Spikes on stars (if can add some contribution to the look of the image) are done with StarSpikesPro plug-in.

Thanks again to everybody!

Clear Skies
Marco

[atalas]

Wonderful!

[iceman]

It's very unusual that I was choose the same person for another IOTW so soon after their last one - however this image was so mind-blowingly good that I couldn't resist choosing it as IOTW (http://www.iceinspace.com.au) this week, no matter how hard I tried - I just kept coming back to this image.

Congratulations on such a fine piece of work.

[bkm2304]

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a barred spiral here? Just askin'.:shrug:
Richard

[Moon]

I'm a bit late to the party but I have to agree this is probably the best LMC I can recall seeing.



This place is getting more like reddit every day. Not that I have a problem with that.

tl;dr
Great Image.

[gregbradley]

Yeah that's what I see. Wonderfully demonstrated.

Greg.

[bkm2304]

Great, Greg! Now all we have to do is convince everyone else that a little messed up galaxy about a squillionth as big as a standard barred spiral is just that!

But joking aside, I actually do see a bit of a remnant there. Maybe so much mass has already been drawn off that it looks irregular even though once it was a barred spiral. Maybe someone with some knowledge about galaxy evolution/canibalisation can comment on just what the LMC was before it got "involved" with the milky way.:question:

Richard

[Phil Hart]

Yeah.. that's the problem I ran into with my Rho mosaic, both with the 200mm lens and the QHY9 on the Tak E160. At least I know you haven't found any magic solutions ;)

I resolved next time to shoot the colour subs much higher up and not shoot anything as low as I did (I went down to about 30 degress altitude). The panorama stitching in CS5 is *much* better than previous versions for star stuff and did a good job with the 200mm lens shot, but will have to give the Gradient Xterminator thing a shot too.

cheers
Phil

[gregbradley]

And I bet there is a tidla stream of stars from the LMC to the Milky Way. I wonder if there is any way of highlighting that from our perspective.

Greg.

[csb]

That is what I noticed too and Marco states he tried to bring it out.

Amazing image!

[Hagar]

This is really lovely. So much detail and such wonderful color. An effort well spent.

[marco]

Thanks a lot Mike for your appreciation, am happy to had it IOTW :)



Thanks James!



Yep, not much magic behind, just lots of work http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/shrugging.gif



Thanks Craig



Thanks Doug!

Clear Skies
Marco

[marco]

Thanks a lot Mike for your appreciation, am happy to had it IOTW :)



Thanks James!



Yep, not much magic behind, just lots of work http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/shrugging.gif



Thanks Craig



Thanks Doug!

Clear Skies
Marco

[Irish stargazer]

:prey2:
Simply stunning. I didn't realise the LMC was a spiral- until now.

[Paul Haese]

Wonderful image. Great field of view too.

[alexch]

A truly outstanding result, Marco! Thanks for the views.

As for the spiral structure, I came across this deep image yesterday:
http://forum-images.pixinsight.com/carlos/lmc/lmc_large.jpg
(done by Carlos Milovic, from http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=22862 thread)
She does look like a barred spiral to me on both your image and the one inked above.

Cheers,
Alex

[marco]

Thanks a lot John, Paul and Alex for your appreciation :)



Yep, I saw this image as well and have to say it puzzles me a bit, since on my luminance file, despite the several hours of light collection under one of the darkest skies available I cannot stretch to get the view of this structure even if I equalize the summed fits. I will give it a try again, I would like to compare to see if the structure is actually there and exclude the possibility of flatting artifacts.. I don't have info on the lens used or imaging time for Carlos though so cannot compare the details..

Clear Skies
Marco

[Leonardo70]

Marco, congratulations for today's APOD...:thumbsup:

Grande,
Leo

[strongmanmike]

Yes well done Marco, it looks great up in lights :thumbsup:

Mike

[gregbradley]

Congrats Marco for your NASA APOD. Well deserved.

Greg.