NGC 104: A Ball of Stars

[OzRob]

Here is my recent 47 Tucanae image taken from Coonabarbran. I started with 66 sixty second subs in lum and 30 two minute subs in each of RGB, unguided. I had to drop a few subs due to some errors.

[gregbradley]

That turned out very nicely.

Greg.

[SkyViking]

Awesome! I really like how crisp and yet balanced it is, and resolved all the way to the core. And those star colours are great. Very nice indeed.

[Stevec35]

Yep - that's a nice 47 Tuc. A good test is to avoid burning out the centre and you've done that very nicely.

Cheers

Steve

[Lester]

As others have said, not an easy object to get right, and you have. Wonderful image Rob.

[John Hothersall]

A high class image for sure with good star colour coming through.

John.

[jase]

Great work Rob. Personally I found NGC104 far more difficult to process that Omega Centauri. NGC104 has such a dense bright core, it takes some work to keep things under control to show the fully dynamic range. Thanks for sharing this. I hope to see more.

[OzRob]

Thanks guys!

I think some of the reason that this worked is that I have to first work to control the blooming. As such I have to keep the subs short (especially for the lum). It appears that this suits this target.

[strongmanmike]

Yeh that is good Rob :thumbsup:

The resolution to the centre is great.

I see a darkening around the main ball of stars, like it is sitting in a dark hole. This may be a flats issue..?

Nice work

Mike

[OzRob]

Mike, I am assuming that what you have done is stretched the data some more. What you are seeing is the effects of GradientXterminator as I had some gradients in the data. I have yet to work out how to avoid this. I would appreciate any suggestions if you have any.

[strongmanmike]

Yes GE can do this at times.

No I didn't stretch it, I could just see it on the screen

I have been using the gradient function in Astroart5 lately and it works quite well. Short of not using GE on it in the first place, you could now try selecting the dark area and feathering it and then adjusting brightness, contrast and curves and do a few light iterations until you can't see the darke hole anymore.

Mike

[atalas]

Looks great Rob! congrats.....love to see a larger image.

With GradientXterminator,you need to get a better selection and feathering happening....how are you doing you selection? I find I get my best results when using the magic wand tool to select the background.

[OzRob]

Black hole removed, I think..:question:

[Paul Haese]

Like this one Rob, Great colour and saturation.

[Ross G]

A great photo Rob.


Ross.