Tarantula up close

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Hi Guys,

No new images yet , but I’ve had plenty of time to reprocess my Tarantula image (several times!!) during the many cloudy moonless nights I’ve had here lately !! At least I’m getting LOTS of practice with processing. Here’s a crop of the original full frame (taken in Feb with my TOA-150 + STL-11k) – tweaked slightly in colour and smoothed a bit. The FOV is around 26x24 arcmins – which is around 8% of original frame.

For a full res image see http://www.pbase.com/gailmarc/astro_images

Cheers, Marcus

[jase (Jason)]

Marcus, I like your processing efforts but in all seriousness you need to collect more data. A total luminance of 9 minutes (3 min subs) is extremely low. With such a lack of data, you're limited by the amount of processing you can do. In fact no amount of processing will remove the noise you have present without gathering more data.

Out of desperation, you could perhaps try blending the R and L channels - for what its worth.

Hope you get some clear nights soon to complete this masterpiece.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Originally Posted by jase

....you need to collect more data. A total luminance of 9 minutes (3 min subs) is extremely low. With such a lack of data, you're limited by the amount of processing you can do. In fact no amount of processing will remove the noise you have present without gathering more data.

For sure Jase - I think I've about squeazed every last ounce of image out of that data. I can tell you it wasn't easy either! I've learned a lot since I took my first pic though and next time - hopefully very soon - I'll gather more data in the correct proportions to make my processing a lot easier.

Cheers, Marcus

[tornado33]

Nevertheless a great image, focus and tracking excellent, and the big chip has a lot of coverage.
Scott

[Dr Nick (Nick)]

Thats amazing considering exp. time!

[2020BC (Bill Christie)]

That is a very fine image considering the exposure time.

[Ric]

That a great image Marcus, I'm looking forward to seeing some more data in it. That will turn it into something really spectacular.

Cheers

[iceman (Mike)]

I love it! Perhaps a tad too pinkish for my liking, but for a full crop it's remarkable.