Antares region.. QHY9 and 80mm lens

[Phil Hart]

Some people are (rightly) wondering whether I ever image anything other than Antares/Rho Ophiuchi, but it is my favourite area of the sky and this was a bit of an extended test of a CCD/lens setup which I haven't tried properly yet, despite picking up my first 80mm Mamiya lens about the same time as I bought the QHY9 (second hand) two years ago.

http://philhart.com/gallery/Astrophotography/Nebulae/Antares.jpg.html

This image was taken at Heathcote Leon Mow Dark Sky Site over Thursday (mostly clear) and Friday (only half clear) last week. Very cold temperatures for early May!

Ended up being nearly ten hours of exposure (L280:R70:G70:B90:HA80) as I just let this run (no guiding) both nights while I concentrated on other things (or slept). The Mamiya 645 80mm f2.8 lens was set to around f5. Fine focussing mechanism was a typical Hart hack job involving rubber bands and small screws..

cheers
Phil

[multiweb]

:eyepop: Great shot Phil. I love this area as well. The colours are unreal. It looks good at any FL but widefield suits it best. Nice one. :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

It looks fabulous at the smaller frame size. Lovely colours. The lens
doesn't appear to have coma at the F stop.

Greg.

[iceman]

Is the Antares region all you take photos of, Phil? :)

Lovely image as usual.

[strongmanmike]

Yeh a nice result really..especially for a set and forget :thumbsup:

Enter it in the DM"s, from last years results David clearly likes that region :rolleyes: :lol:

Mike

[Ross G]

Hi Phil,

A great photo...great detail, great colours and nice wide angle fov.


Ross.

[batema]

I have never had a go at this region but am keen to. A beautiful image with fantastic colours and dust lanes. I would be interested in seeing a photo of your set up or description as we have a qhy-9 and would love to know how to hook it up together.

Mark

[jjjnettie]

Oh yes....that's nice.
The colours are just right.
Isn't it the most beautiful region of the sky?

[Bassnut]

Whoa, top work, but yes ive seen that before ;). Kind of.................too static. IMO, its static and NF, or its moving, in which case WW is maginally acceptable :thumbsup:.

[avandonk]

I had a play with Phil's data. I used the common area of a mosaic I am doing and his dark sky data to produce this image.

13Mb

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_05/phil_bert-CBf_easyHDR_2L_10.jpg

I used Phil's 8bit data for this image.

He has sent me his 16bit data so with trial and error will get a better image.

Bert.

[gregbradley]

I had a play around with Phil's original image as well. I believe there is considerable room for additional processing on this one. Stars are the main thing to handle as the no tracking shows up as soon as you enlarge. It is handleable in PS though. A bit more clarity is also achievable. Its a very fine image and lots of great data enabling the processing to be done.

Greg.

[avandonk]

This a combination of Phil's RGB data only with my RGB data. The main effect this has is my data at 300mm will reduce star size and enhance resolution. Phil's data taken at a dark sky site has the really faint nebulae well recorded. I have put the image up at the upsized version I am working at.

Same image just different saturations. Both about 6MB.

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_05/RGB_1.jpg


http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_05/RGB_2.jpg

Now I have a feeling for how CCD data behaves I will have a play wiyh Phil's HA and Luminance data. This may take some time.

Bert

[avandonk]

Four images all about 4MB.

The first is taken with my 300mm setup and is a four panel mosaic

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_05/B1_.jpg

The second is the same area from Phil's (philiphart) data using RGB, Luminance and HA.

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_05/P1_.jpg

The next two are HDR's made with both of these images at 4 stops apart.
Only difference is the level of saturation.

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_05/B+P_1.jpg

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_05/B+P_2.jpg

Note how these HDR's have the best of both images. Small tight stars from my dim longer focal length 300mm image and lovely bright nebula from Phil's dark sky images at 80mm.

It looks like collecting dim nebula data for widefields with a shorter focal length optic at a remote dark site can be used to augment images taken under light polluted skies at longer focal lengths.

Bert

[John Hothersall]

That is an amazing image of a superb region with such wonderful colours and dust structures.

John.

[FlashDrive]

They are nice shots ... great colours to.. :thumbsup:

[avandonk]

Here is my version of Phil's RGB, Lum and HA data. I am not used to processing CCD data but the data was very good, so far easier to practice on. I did not use any star reduction or RL enhancement.

Large image 6.5MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_05/philff.jpg

I would like to thank Phil for letting me use his data to play and learn. It has been very useful to me. Thanks again Phil.

Bert

[prokyon]

Thanks for sharing. Very nice! This is my favorite area of the whole sky. So hard to capture from Europe. :(

Cheers

Werner