NGC 2070, 3372 and M 104

[bmitchell82]

Well like Leinad and Grahame I too was out at the Dryandra DSO weekend. Thursday night I trecked out ahead of the main cast. Set up after nearly 4 months of not even touching the scope I was imaging when astronomical twilight had come. So i set my sights on something very easy to test out the new FLI filters and make sure everything was working so NGC 3372 or as commonly known Eta Carinae nebula. The next evening everybody rolled in and decent non clouded night, though an abundance of water vapour in the upper atmosphere put paid to really faint stuff that i wanted to look to so once again I kept to brighter targets of the Tarantula and M104.

So without further adoo,

Standard rig, 254 astrograph, EQ6pro polished, OAG, Qhy9mono, FLI filters

Eta Carinae - LRGB 600,600,600,600 Bin 1x1 2.5hrs
here (http://brendanmitchell.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/NGC-3372-first-process-40_40_40_30_150min.jpg)

Tarantchula - LRGB 900,600,600,600 Bin 1x1 1.5hrs
here (http://brendanmitchell.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/NGC-2070-30_20_20_20_130minV1.jpg)

M104 - Sombrero Galaxy LRGB 900,600,600,600 Bin 1x1 2.5hrs (high cloud affected)
here (http://brendanmitchell.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/M-104-Colour-first-round-process.jpg)
Note: In the full res version and just in the compressed jpg version the ring structure can be seen.

Hope you all enjoy!
Brendan

[Mighty_oz]

Good to see u back here. Love your Eta, the tarantula looks over exposed to me too bright, and the link to m104 goes to Eta one Like to see it as well.
Just had a look see at your site, are u going to produce those oag's ?

[allan gould]

Too much Eta, Brendan.

[bmitchell82]

I know alan :) but at the end of the day when you havn't used your telescope since mid November 2011, have moved house, the last thing that i wanted to do was hunt down extremely faint dark nebs :) So Eta it was plenty of guide stars, loads of colour to test out the colour rendition of the new filters. :)

Mighty, fixed the link should work now. Tarantchula is a bright target, its not over exposed of that im sure of as the stars in the core are resolved. :)

[Peter.M]

Nice one! You sir get two thumbs up :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Paul Haese]

I like the Eta shot Brendan. Very contrasty.

[bmitchell82]

Thanks peter

Paul, the contrast can be attributed to the central obstruction being 26% of the aperature. When i get home I will upload higher resolution so you can zoom in alot more as there are some fantastic little bits.

[RobF]

Good to see you back in action Brendan. Eta is my fav, but love M104 too. Are the stars in the bottom left of Eta elongated a bit?

[bmitchell82]

Thanks rob,

Im getting a bit of a issue with the MPCC seating correctly due to that STUPID cut out that they insist putting in there!!!! the FT focuser compression ring sits about 1.5-2mm onto the edge of that rebate. So at the moment i have coke can cut up into a strip that is exactly the right width. Although its made it much better it still sits out a tiny bit :(

[RobF]

Aha, sounds frustrating. I'd actually wondered about that when thinking about going with a compression ring set up in the past. My poor MPCC scarred to bits from 3 thumb-screws :sadeyes:

[bmitchell82]

Mine isn't scared but its a pain :D Ive even considered chucking it into the Lathe to take off the final bit of material.

[Rigel003]

The sombrero is especially nice.

[seanliddelow]

Excellent image Brendan:thumbsup:
Now I need to get the cats eye collimation kit:D. The sharpness really shows.

Sean

[bmitchell82]

Thanks Rigel

Sean, its all about collimation with newtonians and alot of people think a laser collimator is the key. It is so far off from being even remotely correct! as the results show in visual as well as photographic.

[Ross G]

Great photos Brendan.

The Sombrero galaxy is my favourite.

Ross.

[bmitchell82]

Thanks ross,

Hopefully i can get some time without high cloud posing issues! Glad you have enjoyed the view.

Brendan

[TrevorW]

Not sure about Tarantula

Eta and Sombrero look fine

[strongmanmike]

These are all pleasing results Brendan, I like your Eta Carina area...seems to be a move toward blue in this area at the moment ;)

I like that composition for M104 and I composed a similar crop myself with a Starfire frame, year before last :thumbsup:

The Tarantula is nicely corrected and full of stuff, great stuff :P

Mike

[bmitchell82]

Thanks Mike, Trev,

Yeah my renditions have never been blood red as Ha isn't blood red its more a salmony red :) Plus theres alot of 0III mixed in which turns it even more so :).

I was looking at my crop of HH666 and the only thing that i can do now to get it crisper is A. Optics B. Better seeing, In any case i can see the protoplanetary disk without any issue which is nice!

I was also surprised by the amount of detail stuck in sombrero galaxy itself :).

[strongmanmike]

Yeh I can see the Evil HH really well in your data too :thumbsup:

It is my understanding it is the H-Beta emission that imparts the blue to the Ha making it varying shades of magenta rather than red but as for the blue/cyan being presented in the the nebula in some images....I can't find any reference as to why this might be so in the natural RGB range..? The La Silla 2.2m shot (http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0905a/)released recently shows the blue/cyan quite strongly but it was composed from 6 different filters (U, V, Ha, SII, Blue and Red):shrug: . Manipulating colours for purely aesthetic reasons is perfectly legitimate (I do it often) but I don't understand what might be causing this blue otherwise? It can't be from Rayleigh scattering as this would surely be overwhelmed by the strong emission from such a large neb (wouldn't it?) so is there an explanation for this blue appearing in a natural RGB presentation coming from real physics occuring in the RGB range?

Mike

[gregbradley]

Beautiful Eta. Lovely M104, nicely framed with those nice bright stars on the right.

Tarantula (note spelling Brendan - write 20 lines I will spell Tarantula correctly:lol:) didn't quite work out. Not sure why.

Greg.

[bmitchell82]

Mike,

Ill do a high res crop of the HH area for you to have a gizzy gander in. Things are in the pipe to see if i cant get more resolution soon enough :)

As for the blue colouring, well im not sure to be quite honest! Im with you on the artistic colouring sometimes, but this isn't coloured, no layer masks etc.

All I have done in regards to the colour is amped it up to get more vibrance into it Curves and histogram matching. I could have said before that it may be due to the QHY filters and their odd colouring but im now using FLI LRGB's and as you can attest to high end filters their colour is a dream to use! Plus there isn't a Ha blend in this bad boy yet.

Greg,

What did you mean by it didn't work out? ive had some say that its fried, but on my monitors laptop,home x2 work and uni they all show it nicely.

Ill get the spelling correct for Tarantchula right one day :) Thanks for the comments.