You must have been drinking your magic potion because you've smashed that one out!
Very, very nice. Obelix & Dogmatix would be very happy with that too.
Terrific result, well done
By Belenos and Toutatis, a fine shot! Nice to see the structures in this a little closer with your skills, and a very pleasing colour mix of narrow and broadband.
The natural colour image with H-alpha showing red fooled colourblind MBJ at first. He had to swap the red and green channels, and then suddenly there it was! Excellent!
Nicely detailed and sharp there Mike, but I have to agree with Marcus that you've been a bit timid with the background structure. An aggressive push reveals a lot of stuff in the background.
Asterix? Thor? No. It's an alien sending a message. We are here and coming to get you!
Cheers guys always good to get out and chuck together an image.
Regarding bringing out more background stuff, I think in this case I was looking for a nice natural looking result and stretching that area just made it look a bit too harsh this time, sure some more nebulosity came out in the back ground (and hey...I know how to reveal faint stuff, no fear of that ) but I had to use too much noise reduction to tame the stretched noise to match in with the processing look I was after and it just didn't look right.... I didn't want to have a highly detailed helmet crest and wings area and a non matching smoothed out faint extensions area. I see this in some selectively smoothed/sharpened galaxy shots for example and it looks wrong to me.
Buuut having said that...I did finish this at 2am or so this morning sooooo, maybe I'll take another look when I get home..?
Thanks for the feedback dudes
Oh and Geoff, good to see the imagination flourishing...you will be up to MBJ's standard before ya know it...
Cheers Dylan I loved Obelix, who, along with the Incredible Hulk, was one of my early inspirations to love pure strength and ultimately attaining a great deal of it in my later years
Quote:
Originally Posted by Maurice
That looks great Mike.
Wish I had dark skies to do it justice in RGB.
Cheers
Maurice
Cheers Maurice but most of this was NB, one doesn't absolutely need dark skies to make a colourful image in that case....for shooting faint galaxies (where NB can't be used) however...now that's when ya need some dark skies
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
Very nice Mike. I too thought it may be a little deeper for 17 hours. Perhaps some 2x2 would've helped there.
Love the processing and colours.
Greg.
Cheers Greg .. in the end there really isn't much more in the frame, for the reasons explained above, I just haven't over emphasised all of it within my processing I guess it comes down to processing choices? ...I'll have another look...if I get the urge
Nice image Mike, oddly imaging the same target around the same time. I agree with Marcus that you could open up the other structures a bit. You have quite a lot of depth in the data that could be revealed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
......
I think in this case I was looking for a nice natural looking result and stretching that area just made it look a bit too harsh this time, sure some more nebulosity came out in the back ground.........
........
Mike
Yes the stretch noise can be seen (I tried and saw it) but not too bad really, especially given the low noise sensor you are using. As you say you wanted something you were happy with. I suppose it could also be the large halo you have on the right hand side too, which is revealed by stretching.
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
... one doesn't really need long focal length as such to get good resolution...it's all in the seeing and the image scale
Mike
True image scale can be comparable with the right pixel size and f ratio, but good seeing is still needed for a long focal length scope too. In poor seeing a long focal length scope still produces poor results. There are certainly a lot of advantages to both system types, yours without doubt is the imaging speed and the adaptability for wide or narrow field, though the lever arm of a big Newtonian and the price of an f3.8 scope has got to be considered in the equation. I have thought several times about going along this route and each time the price, lever arm and the sheer size of a Newtonian prevents me from buying one.
I didn't want to have a highly detailed helmet crest and wings area and a non matching smoothed out faint extensions area. I see this in some selectively smoothed/sharpened galaxy shots for example and it looks wrong to me.
...I'll have another look...if I get the urge 
