M 16 in narrowband with a slight twist - Page 2

RobF (Rob) · #21 13-10-2013, 09:42 PM

Thanks Rick. Interested in another knitting circle too. Worried I won't have much if anything new to contribute but, while you're coming ahead in leaps and bounds!

DavidTrap (David) · #22 13-10-2013, 10:03 PM

You guys referring to a serious session of PI as a knitting or sewing circle will just give my wife something further to ridicule me about!

DT

jase (Jason) · #23 13-10-2013, 10:05 PM

Great image Rick. Enjoyed the colour palette you've present. Rather different compared to the deep, more pronounced hues that others display. Stars are beautifully resolved. A real stunner. Well done.

strongmanmike (Michael) · #24 13-10-2013, 10:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidTrap

You guys referring to a serious session of PI as a knitting or sewing circle will just give my wife something further to ridicule me about!

DT

Julia Gillard is a keen knitter..I hear she has some time on her hands, perhaps she would be interested in PI too

RickS (Rick) · #25 13-10-2013, 10:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shiraz

Congrats Rick, that is a super image. nice smooth colour with fine detail - top shelf. Stars just drop in unobtrusively and look perfectly natural. Regards Ray

Thanks, Ray!

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Hothersall

That's a beautiful result, stars do fit in seemlessly like Ray says. The SII is blended very smoothly but I tend to have the SII as a much stronger presence dominating the outer parts, but as usual with NB art is a personal taste.

The longer fl Ceravolo option has given the pillars better edge and shadow detail and with the big sensor you get all the important bits in too.

John.

Thanks, John. I'll have to look more closely at some of your NB work! The scope and camera are a great combo for targets like this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobF

Thanks Rick. Interested in another knitting circle too. Worried I won't have much if anything new to contribute but, while you're coming ahead in leaps and bounds!

I'm sure you'll have some good stuff to share, Rob!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidTrap

You guys referring to a serious session of PI as a knitting or sewing circle will just give my wife something further to ridicule me about!

DT

Hmmm... perhaps we need to call it a "convolution"

Quote:

Originally Posted by jase

Great image Rick. Enjoyed the colour palette you've present. Rather different compared to the deep, more pronounced hues that others display. Stars are beautifully resolved. A real stunner. Well done.

Thanks, Jase!

RickS (Rick) · #26 13-10-2013, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Julia Gillard is a keen knitter..I hear she has some time on her hands, perhaps she would be interested in PI too

I heard she's a member of the Photoshop faction

DavidTrap (David) · #27 13-10-2013, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RickS

I heard she's a member of the Photoshop faction

I do believe I laughed so hard at that I may have snorted!

DT

Paul Haese · #28 14-10-2013, 08:31 AM

Nice Rick, great detail and smooth image. The mega data made for a very smooth image without the look of applying smoothing. Keep doing mega data (being a padawan of Martin's theory of 20-30 hours minimum) it produces the best results. Not doing it is for people who are too lazy to capture the data.

I like the integration of the stars too. Excellent to see narrowband with natural star colour.

Keep it up.

RickS (Rick) · #29 14-10-2013, 08:47 AM

Thanks very much, Paul! It's not too bad collecting megadata for narrowband. At least I can do that from home. It certainly makes the processing easier...

Stevec35 (Steve) · #30 14-10-2013, 09:57 AM

Great result Rick! Certainly worth the time you spent on it.

Cheers

Steve

astronobob (Bob) · #31 14-10-2013, 03:25 PM

Holy torledo batman, That is a towering result Rick, narrow band / rubber band, i dont care, knit one pearl two, what have ya, Id be elastic, i mean estactic about that, and yeah, diff ways to present NB but that sits really nice amoungst the smorgous board Rick, Top Shelf ! ! !

RickS (Rick) · #32 14-10-2013, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stevec35

Great result Rick! Certainly worth the time you spent on it.

Cheers

Steve

Thanks, Steve.

Quote:

Originally Posted by astronobob

Holy torledo batman, That is a towering result Rick, narrow band / rubber band, i dont care, knit one pearl two, what have ya, Id be elastic, i mean estactic about that, and yeah, diff ways to present NB but that sits really nice amoungst the smorgous board Rick, Top Shelf ! ! !

I'm glad you like it, Bob. Your comments always crack me up. Keep them coming

PRejto (Peter) · #33 14-10-2013, 08:07 PM

Really terrific. I quite like the RGB stars too...in my opinion much nicer than magenta.

Peter

strongmanmike (Michael) · #34 14-10-2013, 08:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

being a padawan of Martin's theory of 20-30 hours minimum) it produces the best results. Not doing it is for people who are too lazy to capture the data.

No offence Paul but where do you pull these arbitrary exposure figures from

I mean, it depends on the size of your scope, sensitivity of your camera and darkness of your sky amongst other things

...throwing around "20-30hrs" means zip in the big scheme of things really, taking really long exposures doesn't the guru Yoda make

imaging is imaging... enjoy it for what it is, every image is an image and just as important no matter if it is by the Pugh or the pleb

Mike

RickS (Rick) · #35 14-10-2013, 09:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRejto

Really terrific. I quite like the RGB stars too...in my opinion much nicer than magenta.

Peter

Thanks, Peter!

Quote:

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

No offence Paul but where do you pull these arbitrary exposure figures from

I mean, it depends on the size of your scope, sensitivity of your camera and darkness of your sky amongst other things

...throwing around "20-30hrs" means zip in the big scheme of things really, taking really long exposures doesn't the guru Yoda make

imaging is imaging... enjoy it for what it is, every image is an image and just as important no matter if it is by the Pugh or the pleb

Mike

Mike,

I agree that it's not possible to find a magic number that applies to all imaging set ups, but I think it's part of the natural progression of imagers to go from a quick grab of anything that's in the sky to collecting data over two or more nights to produce a quality image. That's certainly the way I have gone. That might mean 10 hours for a bright galaxy or 40 hours for a narrowband planetary neb.

In the end we're all limited by shot noise and the same laws of Physics and it takes what it takes to grab an image of a certain image scale and quality.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say here so I'll shut up now

I expect that Paul will have a robust reply when he gets around to it

strongmanmike (Michael) · #36 14-10-2013, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RickS

Mike,

I agree that it's not possible to find a magic number that applies to all imaging set ups, but I think it's part of the natural progression of imagers to go from a quick grab of anything that's in the sky to collecting data over two or more nights to produce a quality image. That's certainly the way I have gone. That might mean 10 hours for a bright galaxy or 40 hours for a narrowband planetary neb.

In the end we're all limited by shot noise and the same laws of Physics and it takes what it takes to grab an image of a certain image scale and quality.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say here so I'll shut up now

I expect that Paul will have a robust reply when he gets around to it

Yeah, of course, I know this and it's effective keep at it mate. Hey, I collected 33hrs on the Helix back in 2009, transported my whole rig 40km out of Newcastle each night for 7 nights over about a two month period

...so I know what it takes

....I just giggle at the fixation on arbitrary so called long expousre lengths plucked out of the air as if if you aren't doing this then it doesn't really count

... and that often appear to do very little for a lot of time expended

Love your work

Mike

RickS (Rick) · #37 14-10-2013, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Yeah, of course, I know this and it's effective keep at it mate. Hey, I collected 33hrs on the Helix back in 2009, transported my whole rig 40km out of Newcastle each night for 7 nights over about a two month period

...so I know what it takes

....I just giggle at the fixation on arbitrary so called long expousre lengths plucked out of the air as if if you aren't doing this then it doesn't really count

... and that often appear to do very little for a lot of time expended

Love your work

Mike

Mike,

Shiraz/Ray did some calcs a while back to model the performance of his ICX694 and Newt and Naskies/Dave has just been doing something similar. Think I might get on the bandwagon as well and determine my sub length and number of exposures scientifically. Then if it doesn't work I'll go back to just making it up

I do agree that you have to take many of the rules of thumb with a grain of salt. The variations in object brightness, sky glow, QE, read noise, etc. are so great that you need to know your gear (either by the numbers or from long experience) and work appropriately.

Cheers,
Rick.

gregbradley · #38 14-10-2013, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RickS

Mike,

Shiraz/Ray did some calcs a while back to model the performance of his ICX694 and Newt and Naskies/Dave has just been doing something similar. Think I might get on the bandwagon as well and determine my sub length and number of exposures scientifically. Then if it doesn't work I'll go back to just making it up

I do agree that you have to take many of the rules of thumb with a grain of salt. The variations in object brightness, sky glow, QE, read noise, etc. are so great that you need to know your gear (either by the numbers or from long experience) and work appropriately.

Cheers,
Rick.

I agree. It really depends on the object's brightness, aperture, dark skies, Sensor QE and sampling, narrowband or not.

Generally I find galaxies need the longest exposure times.
Megadata has its own problems. Like sometimes needing different sets of flats if anything is moved in between a series. If the image does not work out (not all do) then you've lost a lot of time investment.

Greg.

naskies (Dave) · #39 14-10-2013, 11:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RickS

Shiraz/Ray did some calcs a while back to model the performance of his ICX694 and Newt and Naskies/Dave has just been doing something similar.

I've been going through John Smith's calculations this past weekend:

http://www.hiddenloft.com/notes/SubExposures.pdf

Starizona's Ideal Exposure Calculator and PixInSight's CalculateSkyLimitedExposure use the same equations, though they don't appear to have implemented the exposure reduction factors (i.e. shoot half the duration of sky limited exposures).

I've been putting together a spreadsheet using my camera's actual empirical values to be able to quickly calculate optimal exposures for each channel based on the target object's brightness, local skies, plane/satellite frequency, sensor temperature, etc.

(Thanks to overscan calibration, I now only need to shoot a set of dark frames for one duration at each temperature and they scale very accurately.)

Dennis · #40 15-10-2013, 06:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

snip>
imaging is imaging... enjoy it for what it is, every image is an image and just as important no matter if it is by the Pugh or the pleb

Mike

Refreshing to see that you are still a man of the people Mike and that the romantic era of amateur astrophotography is still alive and thriving, despite your amazing set up and world class results.

Vote Mike for PM!

Cheers

Dennis