Edge-on Spiral Galaxy ESO 243-49 (NASA)

[Ironbird (Terri)]

I downloaded the Large (952.0 kB) image as distributed by our friends at
NASA http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/exotic/pr2012011b/
read about the galaxy here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HLX-1
It's a strong candidate for an intermediate mass black hole @ 10^2 - 10^5 M☉


I applied my magical enhancement protocol (mep) and here's what percolated to the surface. Remember; no colorization, no solarization and no edge detection. A bit of sharpening (as a final touch) but no edge detect and
no saturation adjustment (up or down) - all "au naturale" - as generated by
my mep.

Not sure what to make of it .. if anything! As always; I encourage your comments. Keep em coming!

[Ironbird (Terri)]

if one looks carefully; the central regions appear bridged by maroon-coloured "tabs" .. and .. there appears a contained, central "assorted jellybeans" multi-coloured region. No shortage of colour - safe to suggest.

[multiweb (Marc)]

What's MEP?

[Ironbird (Terri)]

it's a protocol I developed (discovered) originally for forensic crime-busting
purposes. Specifically in relation to over-exposed video footage of bad guys.
It seems to open up previously unseen vistas in all manner of photographs
and as such it's a keeper and I'm keepin it! : )

Your going to have to come up with more than just a one-liner if you want to pry this one from my greedy little hands. I encourage detailed comments and
lots of discussion. It's traditionally what Progress is predicated on. MEP is no exception. Keep em comin!

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Ooooo-k spill the beans... this all looks a little loopy, ...candid camera perhaps

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Interesting processing artefacts!

[Atmos (Colin)]

I am curious as to what this is supposed to achieve. The problem with running anything on a 1mb jpeg? is the HUGE amount of artefacts that are generated. There is a couple of squiggly yellow lines on either side of the galactic core but I am struggling to see what they could potentially be. Perhaps you could enlighten me :-)

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Ironbird

it's a protocol I developed (discovered) originally for forensic crime-busting
purposes.

Is this all done in photoshop or another software?

[Eden (Brett)]

Definitely has that Andy Warhol feeling about it!

[astroron (Ron)]

I really don't see the point of the exersize.
Does nothing for me at all.
Wont bother looking at any more examples.
Cheers

[Eden (Brett)]

Any progress on that peltier-less cooling protocol, Ironbird?

[Andy01 (Andy)]

Imo the intent of this forum is to share knowledge and help one another. To be seen to be grandstanding, allegedly withholding knowledge or techniques, with images available in the public domain, ie: not captured by oneself seems contrary to this imo. But maybe it's just me...

[Kunama]

Is it just me or has that black hole swallowed a dolphin? See last pic.....

[Atmos (Colin)]

Originally Posted by Kunama

Is it just me or has that black hole swallowed a dolphin? See last pic.....

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
Dolphins at the end of the Universe

[Ironbird (Terri)]

OK so to address imaging artifacts I decided to apply some MEP to the tiff
image of same galaxy -- again; as kindly provided by NASA. Safe to suggest it differs significantly from the jpeg offering. Not sure why.

Here it is uploaded as a jpeg although downloaded and enhanced in it's native tiff file format. We'll call them Tiffpegs : )

n.b. my peltier-less cooling strategy is "on ice" for the time-being .. hope to rekindle matters in this direction sooner than later. Nice of you to inquire.

"I really don't see the point of the exercise.
Does nothing for me at all.
Wont bother looking at any more examples." << Thou doth protesteth too much for doth reasons unbeknownsteth

[Ironbird (Terri)]

As for not sharing in my secret protocol which took me way longer to
develop than it should have (hint) ... I would like to think (that) any digital imaging specialist (worth their grain of silver chloride) would be/should be able to generate the same ... without too much further ado. There is absolutely zero-hoaxing going on here .. no externally introduced information .. it's all from the NASA original with no skull-duggery included. If you would really like to know more about MEP .. I would suggest private messaging me .. I've never had one! It's overdue!

[Ironbird (Terri)]

wonder what happened to the dolphin? <>< <><

[graham.hobart (Graham stevens)]

with no reference to scale or procedures it's hard not to assume these are just artifacts introduced. That's what they look like to me and I remember doing a Dr Who on earlier pictures with similar results.
I am not learning anything from this line of work.
Sorry, but I visit this site to learn from people who explain techniques and skills for free and in good will.
This just looks like Gustav Klimt type nonsense to me
Graham.

[Ironbird (Terri)]

if there is no compression then there are no imaging artifacts - am I right?

My protocol is predicated on median filters and linear adjustments re: hue and sharpening. Nothing too fancy. I'm not willing to provide my exact protocol..lets see what you can do first. It's kinda like "I'll tell you which bank I frequent but don't expect me to hand over my pin code!"


In the most recent series of images: I'm zooming in on some anomalous black dits on the centralized half-torus reddish orange bulge. X-marks the spot. Sorry if it's confusing .. magnification gets pretty extreme .. but it's always centered on the left-hand side black dit on the central reddish orange bulge. < I do vary the hue mind you .. just follow the roughly triangular left hand side "dit" through "the paces".

As for there being no scale of reference .. that's a valid complaint.

I'm having no luck finding a value for the diameter the galaxy .. it's just quoted as "large". Let's assign a largish value of 100 000 ly. The central region is about 15% of the width of the galaxy. The black X-marks-the-spot region is roughly about 5% of the width of the central region. Consequently the entire region of the "quad pictures" extends perhaps 75ly horizontally side-to-side.

I'd like to jump on the "it's all just imaging artifacts" bandwagon but the closer I view this picture the more I get the impression that it's anything but imaging artifacts. Everything is behaving way too consistently .. and besides it's a tiff file and not a jpeg file.

[Eden (Brett)]

Originally Posted by Ironbird

if there is no compression then there are no imaging artifacts - am I right?

Not necessarily. Excessive processing of any kind, regardless of what filters are used, will almost certainly introduce erroneous components which were not present in the original data.

I don't know what software you are using but you did mention sharpening. Take a look at (for example) the source code for the The Gimp, the popular open-source image processing/painting program. Specifically, look at the various sharpening filters and see what they actually do the pixel data on a per value basis.

It looks as though you've employed a bump-mapping filter on one of the images attached earlier. The pronounced "squareness" exhibited is a strong indication of extreme processing to the point where the original data is rendered almost meaningless.