How Deep can you Go?

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by alpal

Hi Mike,
what are the technical reasons why your image is better?

Better?..it's not better but rather has revealed the same or more of the faint galactic cirrus that's all. It wasn't that long ago that this stuff was considered out of range for amateur astroimagers. As Andy will surely testify however, the original raw plate fine details visible under the optical viewer he would have used must have been mind blowing, David just applied high contrast techniques to surface the very faint material....which we can do now too ...a very fast 12" astrograph, dark skies and a sensitive CCD camera helps too of course

Originally Posted by andyc

Once upon a time I spent a couple of weeks marking satellite trails on UK Schmidt plates in Edinburgh over a light table. Superb fun for me, getting to freely explore those plates in detail, and not really the intended 'work' experience. But I'd not have believed that amateurs could ever match the depth and quality of imagery. It looks like you have done just that. Truly awesome imaging there Mike!

What a cool job and yes I was an avid astrophotographer from about 1982 so this deep high contrast Schmidt work by David always blew my mind..so to finally be in a position to emulate it is truly an honour


Thanks for the comments everyone else, the skies are clear and it looks like another good all nighter ahead so I should have a complete full frame colour version soon

Mike

[andyc (Andy)]

Indeed the plates had lovely resolution as I recall, you could magnify a long way and still see more details, or resolve tiny galaxies, before you reached the grain of the plates. Addictive viewing! But let's not distract from the depth and quality of your image Mike, very much looking forward to the colour version...

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by andyc

Indeed the plates had lovely resolution as I recall, you could magnify a long way and still see more details, or resolve tiny galaxies, before you reached the grain of the plates. Addictive viewing! But let's not distract from the depth and quality of your image Mike, very much looking forward to the colour version...

Looking good outside.....just waiting for it to rise up high enough.....very excited tonight

Mike

[alpal]

Originally Posted by alpal http://www.iceinspace.com.au/vbiis/i...s/viewpost.gif

Hi Mike,
what are the technical reasons why your image is better?

Mike,

Better?..it's not better but rather has revealed the same or more of the faint galactic cirrus that's all. It wasn't that long ago that this stuff was considered out of range for amateur astroimagers. As Andy will surely testify however, the original raw plate fine details visible under the optical viewer he would have used must have been mind blowing, David just applied high contrast techniques to surface the very faint material....which we can do now too ...a very fast 12" astrograph, dark skies and a sensitive CCD camera helps too of course

Well that's right Mike,
The CCD cameras have a higher dynamic range than film
& by stacking we can get better signal to noise ratios.
The comparison would also depend on how the film image
was converted into digital - maybe with many losses -
as Andy seems to be reporting more detail from the original film plates.

It does however mean that we amateurs can do a lot of original work
to a standard that would have taken million of dollars of equipment in the 70s & 80s.
We are living in amazing times - a digital revolution.
I predict that amateurs will get hold of deformable secondary mirrors
for true adaptive optics in under 10 years time.
Just have a surf through this website:

http://www.alpao.com/?utm_source=ALP...m_medium=email

cheers
Allan

[LightningNZ (Cam)]

Originally Posted by alpal

Originally Posted by alpal
We are living in amazing times - a digital revolution.
I predict that amateurs will get hold of deformable secondary mirrors
for true adaptive optics in under 10 years time.
Just have a surf through this website:

http://www.alpao.com/?utm_source=ALP...m_medium=email

cheers
Allan

Sadly we may have difficulty in sampling the atmosphere in order to correct for it. ESO and other observatories use sodium lasers to create 'false stars' that are then sampled and corrected for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics
I suspect that if 'green' laser pointers are a problem now, high-powered sodium lasers would be considerably more of an issue.

Still I don't doubt things will continue to improve for amateur.

Cheers,
Cam

[David Fitz-Henr]

That is looking superb Mike; the colour version should be amazing!

[alpal]

Originally Posted by LightningNZ

Sadly we may have difficulty in sampling the atmosphere in order to correct for it. ESO and other observatories use sodium lasers to create 'false stars' that are then sampled and corrected for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics
I suspect that if 'green' laser pointers are a problem now, high-powered sodium lasers would be considerably more of an issue.

Still I don't doubt things will continue to improve for amateur.

Cheers,
Cam

Hi Cam,
I agree,
the deformable mirror must be combined with an EMCCD camera
& both those items are very expensive. (over $30,000)
A laser is not necessary if a very bright star is near the target.
Amateurs may not always be so lucky to have such a star.
Still it was just an aside.

cheers
Allan

[madbadgalaxyman (Robert)]

One aspect of the new technology is that it is far easier to calibrate it and it is far easier to remove noise from images, plus, as mentioned in this thread, it has a much greater dynamic range and S/N ratio than emulsion-based imaging.

The Old photographs of S0 (lenticular) galaxies in the chemical-technology Galaxy Atlases such as the Hubble Atlas of Galaxies and the Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies showed very little detail within these galaxies, giving them an unjustified reputation for being "boring" because of lack of internal detail.

In fact, amateur CCD imaging can show rich and complex low-contrast detail in many S0 galaxies.
CCD imaging has the ability to reveal details in an object which have a very low contrast with the background light of the object; this type of imaging is very important for understanding S0 and elliptical galaxies.

cheers, Robert

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

As I have said before, I like to do these comparisons to gauge the success (or lack of) of my images in revealing faint extended stuff not usually revealed and/or to make it more obvious what I have indeed captured. The original amplified UK Schmidt plate data would look amazing under a micro viewer, what David posted on the web back in 2004 when he did these high contrast repros of the UK Schmidt plate works, were rather small jpegs and the incredible resolution of the original plates is lost (ala most Hubble shots posted on the web) but the extent of the faint material visible is still well represented and not affected by the resolution loss.

Mike

[Ross G]

Amazing detail Mike.

Ross.