Malin's co-added Schmidt exposures - challenges for Deep Sky imagers

[madbadgalaxyman]

I thought it worth a separate post, repeating the post I put into gregbradley's recent thread on the Virgo Cluster.....my post about David Malin's very deep UK Schmidt images of galaxies, and the challenge that these objects and their detected V.faint features present to amateur imagers.....

Malin made a lot of very deep images of galaxies by means of co-adding multiple UK Schmidt films, and while it is still not easy to go this deep, some amateurs now do. Many of his very deep images of galaxies can be found at:

http://www.aao.gov.au/images
(Just click on "Deep Galaxy Images" and you will find the many very deep galaxy images by Malin)

There is a lot of very weird stuff going on in the outer regions of these galaxies imaged by Malin, and much of it is now potentially imageable by very persistent amateurs.
Many of these strange phenomena have never been investigated properly by professional astronomers......
so imaging ultra-deep on galaxies is definitely one way for amateurs to find new things that have not been seen before!!

cheers,
mad galaxy man (is on the loose)

[omegacrux]

Some very good images in that link
And I see you can purchase hi res pics
Thanks for that if people didn't put up these links I know I wouldn't find them !

David :thumbsup:

[ballaratdragons]

Thankyou for the link Robert. :)

Yes, there is a lot of amazing disturbances and stretching and twisting, and dust and all sorts of stuff going on outside those Galaxies that we never normally see. Fantastic. :thumbsup:

I have inverted 3 images to normal as they are my favourite Galaxy Clusters.

Droooooooool :D

1. Centaurus Galaxy Cluster
2. Wider look at Centaurus Galaxy Cluster
3. Coma Berenices Galaxy Cluster

[strongmanmike]

Yep we sure can ;)

1) Here (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/110608746/original)

2) Here (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/132837742/original)

and

3) Here (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/126173938/original)

:D :thumbsup:

[madbadgalaxyman]

Mike,

10 and a half out of 10 for your ultra-deep imaging effort on Centaurus A.......Skill, knowledge, guts, and persistence....

No wonder I don't wish to do my own imaging....I would be scared to compete with people like you,
and anyway... my real knowledge and interest lies in other areas of astronomy (e.g. galaxy morphology and properties)

Oddly, one of the problems that amateurs will face when (and not if) they discover something very weird and new in their ultra-deep images will be actually getting the attention of a professional astronomer......I do find anomalies/peculiarities in existing galaxy images from time to time, which are genuinely new and novel morphologies (because I can do galaxy classifications about as well as a trained professional astronomer), yet I find that I can wave my hands in front of the "pros" and still they hardly notice what I am saying sometimes......they tend to be so specialized that they work on a narrowly focused project for a long time, and won't look sideways at something that is not "their project of the month".

cheers, robert

P.S. I note that in the extremely deep Image that ken (ballaratdragons) displayed of the Centaurus Cluster of galaxies, there appears to be a lot of intracluster (= inter-galaxy) light.
It is proven that in some clusters of galaxies, 10 percent of the total cluster light can come from stars floating in between the galaxies. Extraordinary, I know, yet as Obi Wan Kenobi said "these are the truths that we must cling to."
For more about inter-galaxy stars, do a google search on the following terms:
"Freeman + Arnaboldi + Intracluster"

[strongmanmike]

Weeeell...in this case and even though it wasn't a discovery as such, the full colour version of this image was kindaaaa recognised by the pro community as it was chosen as the diffinitive visible light image of Centaurus A for the Many Faces of Centaurus A international conference held in Sydney in 2009 :D. It was exhibited in the conference hall along side 5 other large posters showcasing Centaurus A in major wavelengths from ground and space based observatories...in fact my image actually appeared in another one of the posters even so yes, it is hard to get any sort of pro recognition in the imaging field but it can happen :thumbsup:

T'was a great honour :)

Here are the 6 posters (http://www.mpe.mpg.de/~hcs/Cen-A/cen-a-pictures.html)

That is a big file at that site, so here is a more managable size (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/112671308/original)version of the poster

Mike