Leo Triplet from Wiruna (2010)

[RobF]

I've been playing on and off with this data for 12 months now. I didn't take any flats at the time which made things very tough afterwards, but I was tantalised by the detail the lum subs showed from the wonderful dark skies we scored at the time. In recent months I've become a bit more adept at colour calibration in Pixinsight too, so I've reached the point I'm reasonably happy with this now.

8" Newt, QHY9, Finder/guider/SSAG
LRGB 45:35:35:35 (all 5mins unbinned)

Thanks for looking

[allan gould]

Great colour, guiding and detail, but its a bit cramped in the composition. But the last is easy to say when not faced with your constraints. Maybe a 2x mosaic would be called for.
Anyway its still a great shot.

[jjjnettie]

It's an awesome image Rob.

[RobF]

Thanks Allan. Actually, I should have 'fessed up that this is a crop out of the middle of the full frame, which in itself was very lazily composed. This was a quick first obect for the 2nd night, and I didn't want to mess with having the QHY9 aligned in RA and DEC knowing I wasn't taking flats (I figured I might be able to get away with library flats for this orientation when back home). I wasn't going to post, but here's the full frame along with some of the nasty calibration artifacts coming through.....:whistle:

I should probably also add this was the first time I let fly with any decent number of LRGB exposures with the mono CCD. Little did I realise at the time it would be my ONLY chance to let rip for 12 months the way the weather has been since :sadeyes:

[RobF]

Thanks Jeanette :D
Certainly the best Leo effort I've managed to date, even with the limitations described of my own making.

[CoolhandJo]

Heaps of detail! Great shot really.

[multiweb]

Real nice Rob. Very good details and vivid colors. :thumbsup:

[h0ughy]

i like what you have done - you are braver than me - with a mono camera. Looks like you are getting the hang of PI

[gregbradley]

That's a great image. I like it. I like the really small stars. That seems to be a characteristic of Newts.

I imaged this one myself last night in a wider view. Its quite low in the northern sky.

Good job.

Greg.

[Fabiomax]

Nice nice details, it seems 3D!
Cheers,
Fabiomax

[SkyViking]

That's a really good image, the colours are in a way subtle and vivid at the same time, just the right balance! I can't see these as I have a hill with trees to the north, but it's great to see others imaging it. Thanks for sharing.

[Ross G]

A beautiful photo Rob....great colours and detail.


Ross.

[strongmanmike]

Fab image Rob as good as one could hope really, I can't see any flats issues on my screen here at work...?...good to take your time on an image processing effort too sometimes :P

Mike

[RobF]

Thanks so much for the kind comments guys. I'm usually guilty of jumping in with 2 left feet at processing time, even if I'm aware of shortcomings, so I'm glad time was taken to learn a bit more and think through obstacles as they came up on this one. I really had no expectation that an image like this might be possible when I started out on it or would have spent 3 times longer collecting data. Bringing out some colour (reds and blues) has a really pleasant surprise, as those details fascinate me in other people's galaxy shots. Very happy with my gear at the moment and what it's capable of, which is just as well - a change to any one part would probably trigger a horrendous upgrade cycle me suspects! :lol:

[Cloudyagain]

That's a great image Rob. The detail in the galaxies (and the processing) is amazing. After having a go at this one myself I can really appreciate what you have got here.

Neale.

[batema]

Hi Rob,

Yes that is a beautiful processed image. Well done. That is amazing for that amount of time.

Mark

[marc4darkskies]

Very nicely done Rob! Processing looks good to me. Well done!

Cheers, Marcus

[richardo]

Great stuff Rob....
Such a low horizon grazer for us, it's amazing the detail you managed!
Your crop only shows a tiny area where a dust mote is hangin'...
The full frame iamge shows what your were talking about..

You owe it to this image (and to yourself) to do flats... really, this is a lovely
image that would be made spotless (no pun was intended... truly)

Rich

[RobF]

Cheers Neale. I'm sure the clear dark Wiruna skies had a lot to do with this. Makes processing of galaxies so much more enjoyable.



Thanks Mark. The newt does suck the light down pretty quick, but on the other hand its not too hard to burn out the bright stars if you're not careful.



Thanks so much Marcus. I loved your rendition of the triplet last year BTW - was certainly an inspiration and benchmark on what is possible at the high end.



Thanks Rich - it seemed a bit counter intuitive to be shooting RGB on this one from even further south than usual, but glad I did now. :)

[lesbehrens]

wow. very nice image. you do some good work.:thumbsup:

[atalas]

Very nice Rob....just need to neutralize the background.

[RobF]

Thanks for that Les. Long time no see - may be a chance to see what you're up to at Astrofest perhaps?



Must confess I obsessed more in the galaxies than the background Rich - will have to check out the histogram a bit more. This one has seen lashings of Pixinsights dynamic background correction to tame the poorly fitting flats and resulting ringing/vignetting.

[Hagar]

Very nice Rob. You just managed to squeeze the three into the frame.
I bet it took you some effort to get the framing just right. Good detail and I love the colours in the galaxies. Is it worth selectively sharpening the dust lane in the vertical galaxy a bit more?

[RobF]

Thanks for that Doug. Yes, I did try deconvolutions and sharpening but couldn't add too much more to the detail in 3628 - we're not talking Starfire or RC here, although the Newt keeps me very happy for the limitations of my imaging budget. I suspect I'm starting to pick up a bit of bias from the Pininsight guys too in that if you can't mathematically select or apply a function you shouldn't just "paint" it in - gets controversial though and I'm certainly not adverse to doing things in PS I can't easily do in PI! I s'pose in the end I strived for processing subtlety as much as possible within the bounds of the data.