M83 take 2

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

I spent a few hours collecting more M83 data on Saturday night to add to what I had captured earlier. It certainly made processing easier to have a few hours to work with. Here's 54x5min subs taken with the QHY8/MPCC/10" Newt.

I'm not entirely happy with the colour at this stage and will have a tweak later this week.

Full res version here: http://astrob.in/11830/

Thanks for looking - comments & advice welcome.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Nice one Pete.

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

That's a nice attempt . I too am struggling to get the colour balance right with M83. Yours looks a touch green (maybe my monitor)? The spiral arms anyway.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Very sharp Peter. Did you take flats? I see a few dust bunnies.

[RickS (Rick)]

Looks great, Peter! Some nice colour in the stars and good detail in the galaxy. The galaxy colour looks pretty good to me too but I'm clearly no expert after my thrashing around with NGC 6744

Cheers,
Rick.

[astronobob (Bob)]

Mighty fine Capture Peter, color or color noise is interfering somehow from what i can see, looks like some rustic orange red noise still visible ?
The scale of the 10" has its advantages over the 8" which I have, = more detail, Envy ! ! also interested in knowing your image scope F/Ratio ? 4, 6, 8 even ? ?
Cheers, a good Galaxy and image of it, Top show ?

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Looks good. Few faint fuzzies there in the background too!

[ozstronomer (Geoff)]

Well done Pete, The extra subs adds some nice colour to the galaxy

[alpal]

That's a very nice deep pic.
It does show a bit of background noise.
Where was it taken? ( from the suburbs or a dark site)
54 subs should have cancelled all that noise out.
Anyway - well done with good data.

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

Nice one Pete.

Cheers Paul.

Originally Posted by swannies1983

That's a nice attempt . I too am struggling to get the colour balance right with M83. Yours looks a touch green (maybe my monitor)? The spiral arms anyway.

Thanks Dan. I'll have another play with it with fresh eyes later in the week.

Originally Posted by jjjnettie

Very sharp Peter. Did you take flats? I see a few dust bunnies.

Yes flats were applied. The images were over two nights and I did use two sets in DSS each with flats so not sure why the dust bunnies still appeared.

Originally Posted by RickS

Looks great, Peter! Some nice colour in the stars and good detail in the galaxy. The galaxy colour looks pretty good to me too but I'm clearly no expert after my thrashing around with NGC 6744

Cheers,
Rick.

Thanks Rick. It's always good to have a reference image to compare the colour balance to however I was in a bit of a rush.

Originally Posted by astronobob

Mighty fine Capture Peter, color or color noise is interfering somehow from what i can see, looks like some rustic orange red noise still visible ?
The scale of the 10" has its advantages over the 8" which I have, = more detail, Envy ! ! also interested in knowing your image scope F/Ratio ? 4, 6, 8 even ? ?
Cheers, a good Galaxy and image of it, Top show ?

Thanks for the comments Bob. not sure where the orange noise is coming from (I'm wondering if it is red LEDs from all the electronic gear near the mount). I'll have to have another go at processing and see if I can tame it down a bit. The 10" is f5.

Originally Posted by troypiggo

Looks good. Few faint fuzzies there in the background too!

Cheers Troy. I was a bit surprised these were not better resolved with the additional subs. The seeing on the econd night didn't seem as good as the first.

Originally Posted by ozstronomer

Well done Pete, The extra subs adds some nice colour to the galaxy

Thanks Geoff. That extra time sure improves the data you have to play with. I need to concentrate on adding data over a few nights more often rather than get a lot of different objects with too short integration time.

Originally Posted by alpal

That's a very nice deep pic.
It does show a bit of background noise.
Where was it taken? ( from the suburbs or a dark site)
54 subs should have cancelled all that noise out.
Anyway - well done with good data.

This was taken from Brisbane suburbs - <5km from the city.

[alpal]

This was taken from Brisbane suburbs - <5km from the city.

That's an amazing image from the city.
Well done.

[stevous67 (Steve M)]

Peter, that is an excellent M83 - taken 5km for Brisbane CBD!! No way!

The detail is really fine, and the colour looks very appealing. If you can gather this data from this location, you will capture the fine pink emissions and the lighter blue colours easily from a dark sky site.

Definitely well done.

Steve

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Thanks for the comments. I've been reprocessing this for a few hours - this time used PixInsight to do the calibration and integration then over to PS for stretching etc. I'm much happier with the colour and sky background in this verison.

Here's the full res version:
http://astrob.in/11830/?r=1941

Thanks for looking.

[alpal]

The colour of M83 is much better & the background is smoother
but you've lost a lot of those nice yellow coloured stars.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

I like it. Nice work mate!