hi all,
Another of our southern spectacles, this one a little more familiar than the last. In Ha this nebula really does come to life and looks even more scary than its name suggests.
Thanks Paul,
This one is another HaRGB image taken with the Intes MN61 and SBIG ST10xe camera. Exposure times were Ha:R:G:B = 190:40:40:40 minutes (310 minutes in total) taken on the 24th April 2005.
There was no on-axis guidestar for this one so it was guided off-axis by the ST5c on the Synta 102mm f5 (at 1000mm via Meade 2x barlow).
Feel free to ask anything else you may be interested in.
I was hoping you'd say a 300D on an 8" meade SCT. That really is a brilliant shot. I often read from other astrophotographers trying to get the red colour how hard it is to bring it out, that the neb so often look blue to green. You certainly have the equipment and skill to do it. What processing programs are you using?
It almost looks like a Renaissance painting of the birth of the universe that wouldn't be out of place being seen on the roof of the Sistine Chapel (If it wasn't doctrinally inapproprate )
Well I don't see why you couldn't use these to get an excellent image of it. The scale would be similar (rough guess). All you need is enough exposure time (or equivalent images to stack) and good focus.
One of the benefits of Ha is that you usually have too much Red So that may help to compensate.
For processing, I use Mira (calibration and registration ), Maxim DL (Sigma-rejection combination of each channel: Ha, R,G and B) and PixInsight (background removal, levels, curves, smoothing if needed) with a little post-processing via Photoshop. Maybe a slight levels tweak and Luminance combination with RGB.
Well I've got 4 of those you'ved referenced. 300D, 8" sct, pixinsight and photoshop. So I'm on my way. Just gotta learn to drive the things. I feel a bit like a kid in a pedal cart being passed by a ferrari, and that's meant as all complement to you, and not referring to my efforts.
Maxim DL I've heard of and understand a smidgeon about, but Mira I don't recall coming across. Could you expand a bit on its purpose and how its used in image processing?
Mira has been around longer than any of them and was the original top-of-the-line DOS image processing package for scientific images for several years. It had many advanced functions for science applications, photometry, image stacking, calibration and data analysis utilities and was also very expensive. Then a few years back the first windows version was released and I bought it and did some beta testing for Mike Newberry, founder, principle and main programmer for Axiom Research.
It's still going strong with a new release recently (see www.mirametrics.com) and personally I think it still has the absolute best image registration routines that I've seen. it just has never gotten it wrong in the 5 years or so that I've been using it and it is very well written. I still don't know how it can animate 100 full-size ST10 images at 40fps on my machine which only has enough memory for about 40 images.
Whoa I'm glad I was sitting down when I had a look through that site Eddie. After a quick scan through I then went to their "Purchase online store" and selected the pro version. However after having a good read through the site I can see why you're so partial to it.
Awesome Eddie
I have just come home from a club night at our dark site & while the Tarantula looked good with a UHC filter & 2" UO Konik.
I think I would need a 32" obsession & HA filter to even come close to seeing that visually !
PS: I hope you are submitting that for publication IN S&S or S&T mag !
That image is superb, definitely one for the magazines in my opinion. BTW how much Aussie dollars are the Sbig's worth? I know there are different versions of them.
Paul, Mira is expensive. Moreso now than when I purchased V5 (for about Aud$600) then I upgraded to V6, but I don't think I will be making the leap to V7 as V6 does all I need.
It is an excellent package though. I can't imagine not using it in the immediate future. Any new software would have to do something pretty spectactular in the registration/alignment processing to surpass it.
Thanks Ian. I will submit it AS&T for sure. I correspond with Jonathan (Nally) regularly and have apologised for not passing more images onto him. I really want to do more contributing but get carried away with doing things and end up forgetting. Too busy or too slack depending on which way you look at it I have a couple of articles in the works for future issues as well.
As for viewing, that was one of the reasons I got into imaging in the first place. I realised that I wasn't ever going to own a telescope big enough to see thing the way I wanted to see them, so photography was the only alternative !
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That is totally awesome Eddie. Stunning. I'd love some capture details
I was hoping you'd say a 300D on an 8" meade SCT. 
That really is a brilliant shot. I often read from other astrophotographers trying to get the red colour how hard it is to bring it out, that the neb so often look blue to green. You certainly have the equipment and skill to do it. What processing programs are you using?
