SMC Ten Hours Exposure

[avandonk]

With the SMC near the zenith for about five hours I decided to collect 80 frames for each exposure over some nights.

80 X (15s, 30s, 60s, 120s and 240s) at 300mm at f/3.6 at an ISO of 1600 and fridge at -12C.

Medium image 8MB. FoV is 5.5 X 4.0 degrees.

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_09/SMC_mos_80fr.jpg

The image has very good detail and low noise. This excessive data collection would be impractical for mosaics.

It works well for the dim detail in this galaxy. The dust lanes are clearly visible if you look hard.

Bert

[bokglob]

Fantastic Bert:thumbsup: Nicely resolved-excellent detail in the large version. So much to see! Thanks for posting.

[glenc]

Thanks Bert for another great image.

[leon]

I like that Bert, very clean and crisp so to speak, well worth the effort.

Leon

[Stevec35]

Nicely done Bert. The colours are a bit muted though. I think it would stand a bit more saturation.

Cheers

Steve

[Ross G]

A beautiful photo Bert.

Your widefields are amazing.

Thanks.

Ross.

[avandonk]

Thanks for the comments all.

If you were wondering how real imaging at a focal length of 300mm is, here are a couple of animated gifs with the exact same area from the ESO Deep Sky Survey.

Here
http://archive.eso.org/dss/dss

This is a 40' X 40' crop animated gif 2MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_09/restest2.gif

To show the really fine detail or lack thereof 8.5' X 8.5' crop animated gif 2MB.

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_09/restest.gif


My guess is that the resolution is better than about 20" for really dim stars. This is a bit less than four sensor pixels.

Bert

[ballaratdragons]

Bert, I opened the gifs and I am amazed at the total lack of noise in your images!!!
It is all pure stars :eyepop:

Lovely work again. :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Everything is really well resolved. Nice one. :thumbsup:

[avandonk]

Here is a full quality jpg at twice the native pixel size of the Canon 5D sensor.

It is 19MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_09/SMC_mos_80frm_L.jpg


Bert

[avandonk]

Here is a version with more saturation and curves applied from Steve's suggestion. I think it is overcooked but then others may like it.

Medium image 11MB.

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2011_09/SMCmosL_sat.jpg

Your opinions are useful so thanks in advance.

Bert