NGC 5128 - Centaurus A

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Longest time I have spent on an object to date. It was truly an all night imaging session (10pm to 4:30am) and from that a lot of detail in the background is evident for a DSLR. If you look in the top left hand corner area there is a small galaxy (PGC 46922) which TheSkyX lists at magnitude 15.44. Deep Sky Stacker took an entire day working through the 500 frames needed, which made my poor little net book really suffer. In the end I am really proud of this image but really suffered from the lack of sleep.


23/04/2012
Canon EOS 350D
Baader Coma Corrector
8 inch (20cm) F/4 Newtonian Reflector Telescope
EQ5 Computerised Goto Mount
Orion 80mm ShortTube Guide Scope
Synguider Autoguider
ISO 800
169 x 2.5 minute exposures (6 Hours and 30 minutes)
169 x 2.5 minute Dark frame subtracted
55 x Flat frames divided
55 x Dark flat Frames subtracted
52 x Bias frames Subtracted
Images stacked and aligned in Deep Sky Stacker
Final processing in Pixinsight and Startools

Picture http://theninja42.deviantart.com/art...laxy-298120032

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

Very Nice Nathan,

Holy moly! 6.5 hours is a lot of data from a DSLR, you have done well!

Very smooth and not much noise at all (actually, none that I can see)....

Simply lovely result, I just spent 2 mins staring at it and forgetting it was a DSLR that took it.

Cheers

Chris

[midnight (Darrin)]

Nice framing Nathan.

You've certainly put in the time and it looks quite good.

Darrin...

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Thanks Chris,
I know the older DSLR's can be a bit noisy so I aimed for a good SNR ratio and plenty of calibration frames to match. Glad you enjoyed it.

Cheers,
Nathan

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Thanks Darrin

[alpal]

That's an amazing result for a DSLR.
I suppose it was the 169 frames & obviously good guiding etc
which helped.
I hope to do as well one day.

[gregbradley]

That is a superb result for a DSLR. Right up there.

Well done for doing the hard work and getting the long exposure needed
to make them shine.

Greg.

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Thanks Greg and Alpal for the kind comments. Putting in the extra effort was well worth it during post processing and wasn't that hard to do.

Cheers,
Nathan

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

Now that's one to be very proud of. All this from a relatively old dslr. Love the star colours. Also shows that you don't necessarily need long subs....just many of them. Congrats

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Thanks Dan,

[RobF (Rob)]

Yes, great effort Nathan.
How dark were the skies you were shooting from just out of interest? You've really pulled out a lot of the halo.

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Near Canberra stadium rob so it's not amazingly dark but it's alright.

[CapturingTheNight (Greg)]

You already know this but a brilliant effort Nathan I was hoping you would post this one here so it can get the recognition it deserves.
Cheers
Greg

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Thanks Greg.

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice effort, lovely image.

Perhaps a tad yellow (the galaxy itself) but well done.

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Thanks Mike. I might look at a repro soon about the colour.

[irwjager (Ivo)]

That is a seriously impressive effort Nathan! Shows you how mastery of your equipment easily beats simply 'owning' better equipment.
If I'm nitpicking (and I mean *really* nitpicking!) I'm wondering if there could be a little bit more detail in the galaxy (noise reduction seems to be a tad harsh) and I'm also noticing star cores aren't completely white, but gray. The latter can often be seen as a side effect of PI's wavelet routines (if you used them) and can be easily fixed with masking the non-treated cores back in. Awesome stuff and definitely worthy of the deep space section of any forum!

[A23649 (Nathan)]

Thanks for the kind comments Ivo,
Yeah I have noticed the stars and galaxy detail a little off and was also playing around with Startools as well to try and fix up those issues. May as well also include the the Synguider has "Gone up s@#$ creek without a paddle" so that might be why the galaxy has lost some detail and I cannot recover it.

[Ross G]

Great photo Nathan.

Nice detail and colour.

Ross.

[Gem (Grant)]

You've encouraged me to stack more and more images!

Really nice effort!