Tarantula Nebula in colour mapped narrowband

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Hi Guys, my 1st colour image with the new rig.

http://fredsastro.googlepages.com/home

Im of 2 minds about this, given the no gear problem excuses, Ive had suripticious guru feedback on the usual overprocessing I am used to applying to LX200R images. Anyway, what the hell, its fairly deep, what with 20min subs on a 85% QE cam, so Im happy for now.

A bit of a rats nest, but thats the Tarantula neb for you .

Cheers

[h0ughy (David)]

gee your not wrong - wow,

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

maybe it is overprocessed ..but holy wow!

[Ric]

Love it Fred, totally awesome. the colours are spectacular.

Cheers

[jase (Jason)]

Magnificent Fred.

What sets this image apart from others I’ve seen is its natural feel. You have not pushed and pulled colours or overly saturated the channels. The soft aqua hues display the intricate knots of nebulosity extremely well. It’s an impressive presentation of your work. Not unlike the pastel hues of an oil painting. Perhaps the soft colours are attributed to your composition technique. I don’t know many that use the Ha for channel luminance in narrowband imaging. Typically mapping SHO or HOS is enough, but to do HS:HO is an interesting way of processing, especially when your Ha is 1x1 and the SII and OIII are 2x2. The strong Ha data has the potential to mute the channels if the blending is strong. You may wish to try lighten mode so you keep unique features of each channel as they are blended. It does look at little over cooked, but I feel narrowband imaging is quite forgiving in this regard. Some of the stars look a little too crunchy for my liking, but no dark halos are present - always a good thing. The total exposure time of 10.5 hours delivers a high signal to noise ratio even when one considers your SII and OIII are only 2 hours each (compared to almighty 6.5 hrs for Ha alone).

While we are down for the count, why not deliver the final devastating blow with your Helix neb…

I thoroughly enjoyed the ride around this spectacular vista. Well done.

[skeltz (Rob)]

Outstanding image fred i like it!!!!!
Come to think of it so are your other images on your site..well done!!

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Hi Fred

I have already commented on this image at MMS group so I wont repeat myself.

The more I look at this image the more it grows on me though. As I said on MMS it might look much better at full res as the large version at your site just doesn't do it justice in my opinion (err? just repeated myself huh?).

The colour combination is rather unusual and I have never seen the Tarantula in those hues before.

It has an almost superhuman look to it.

With the capability of 24/7 imaging you will have to change your call sign from Bassnut to "Exposurenut".

One thing though, the PME is here to stay I am sure buuuut how long before a 10" becomes too small though?

Cheers

Mike

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Thanks Houghy (hey, did the repair work? ;-),Seeker (yeah dude,im workin on it),Ric,Jase,Skelty, Strongman (yeah, armwrestle next SPSP, OK).

Jase, Ha for a lumanence channel seems counter intuative, but I found it sort of works and allows 2:2 binning for SII, OIII without too much loss of effect for the later, whilst maintaining max res overall. I guess im after the most bang for the exposure at the possible muting of the other 2 frequencies. This way I get max signal with 2:2 without going 1:1 with double the exposure and maintain res. Eventually, ill drop Ha as the Lum channel and go 1:1 all up to get the best results.

Yes, its all a bit crunchy, and the noise is obvious at full res, but it was that or heavy clipping. I did consider not posting this for that reason, but sometimes you go with what you have, veiw without zooming please, ill do better next time ;-).

Mike, thanks for your kind words, yep, the S/H 10" was available now, so I took it, sure 12.5 or more is the plan, but that takes a LONG time to get. Perhaps true mega data will be possible with the 24/7 dark sky set up, but then paying customers will come 1st.

Thanks Guys

[Phil]

stunning what esle can i say. Well done.
Phil

[Prickly]

That is simply stunning. It looks like something from the hubble space telescope!

Might be a few people getting busy with their imaging now for next years SPSP I suspect.

Great work.
David

[glenc (Glen)]

Wow! Excellent Fred.