Over 30 hours on M33.

[ollypenrice]

With guest Alex we shot some new LRGB in my Tak 106 and some 3Nm Ha in Tom's, then we scoured the archives for all our old M33 data. This included a 2 panel in the TEC140/Atik 4000, another TEC140/11 meg LRGB, and Baby Q HaLRGB, all coming to over 30 hours. It was a lot of fun putting it all together. Now then, how much saturation is too much? R Jay GaBany argues that anything below the introduction of colour noise is legitmate. I just couldn't quite bring myself to go that far so I backed off from what the data would allow me. It still has a bit of Las Vegas about it, no? Were were quite excited by the little ring structures brought out by the Astrodon Ha filter (around four o'clock and six o'clock.

Olly

Fullsize; http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/22435624_WLMPTM#!i=2870768422&k=xRNG9Hj&lb=1&s=O

[Mark72]

I'd agree Olly, a bit unusual for you, Ha is overwhelming  the rest a bit. I guess it's a nature of this galaxy - large and low surface brightness. Hard to do much with middle to low FL.

Mark

[wxsatuser]

Gobsmacked........ :icon_salut: :icon_salut:

[broca]

I like the Ha regions.  You fellas did a nice job with this project from the galaxy detail, dust lanes and star colors.  Well done!  

[swag72]

I like this Olly, a great example of how you can really mix and match data from different sets. You know when you hit near perfection when people look very closely at stuff - there's some red rogue pixels around the galaxy on the left hand side, just one or two mind!!

I know you'll be pleased that I pointed them out

[ollypenrice]

I'd agree Olly, a bit unusual for you, Ha is overwhelming  the rest a bit. I guess it's a nature of this galaxy - large and low surface brightness. Hard to do much with middle to low FL.

Mark

Actually SmugMug seems to have upped the saturation so I've adjusted it down again here. I do have a version with far less Ha so this was a deliberate choice to show the starforming regions. I'm not sure about the shorter FLs though. I like to see a bit of sky around a galaxy. Maybe Yves would like to take a look with the 14 inch for some serious core detail.

The noise and the dark stellar rings are not seen on the gallery site. http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/i-jgLqSFd/0/X3/M33%203SCOPE%2030HR%20HaLRGBsat%20down-X3.jpg

Olly

[ollypenrice]

I like this Olly, a great example of how you can really mix and match data from different sets. You know when you hit near perfection when people look very closely at stuff - there's some red rogue pixels around the galaxy on the left hand side, just one or two mind!!

I know you'll be pleased that I pointed them out

I'll attend to them at once, ma'am!

Olly

Edit; Ready for inspection!

[sharkmelley]

You've got some great data there and you've pulled out all the essential features really well!

However, from my own viewpoint I don't like the oversaturated "R Jay GaBany" look - I can spot his processing style a mile off and I'm afraid it looks completely unnatural to me.  Admittedly it a question of personal taste but then again, how many people would boost saturation on a landscape photo or picture of their wife just because they can do it without noise appearing?

Mark

[ollypenrice]

You've got some great data there and you've pulled out all the essential features really well!

However, from my own viewpoint I don't like the oversaturated "R Jay GaBany" look - I can spot his processing style a mile off and I'm afraid it looks completely unnatural to me.  Admittedly it a question of personal taste but then again, how many people would boost saturation on a landscape photo or picture of their wife just because they can do it without noise appearing?

Mark

I entirely agree. For me the genius of GaBany's images lies elsewhere, mainly in detecting the undetectable! I wasn't advocating the 'saturate to the noise limit' policy and stopped short here. However, I don't think you have a true analogy in that we know how saturated our landscopes and our wives look and we try to match that visually perceived saturation in our images. On the other hand nobody sees nebula colour to any significant degree in telescopes or with naked eye. Yes, the colours in our picures are more or less 'real' in the sense that they are measured and calibrated, but how should we define reasonable saturation? The moment we see any colour at all we are moving away from what is visually natural.

In this image, and in a collaborative M31 we did last year, I found myself processing such a vast depth of data that the colour felt as if it were screaming to get out. To some extent I feel that, if you have the data, you should present it, though with some conservative restraint.

Olly

[swag72]

I'll attend to them at once, ma'am!

Olly

Edit; Ready for inspection!

All clear now Olly!!! I bet you feel much better knowing that they're not there!!

[ollypenrice]

All clear now Olly!!! I bet you feel much better knowing that they're not there!!

Nothing worse than a rash on yer M33...

Olly

[symesie04]

Wow Olly really dont think i have ever seen an image of M33 with so much detail. It kind of conjures images of candy floss to me (thats def not an insult by the way). Not sure if its to much or no, its definitely dazzling but at same time amazing to see all the activity. The rings are very interesting, any ideas as to what their cause is? Formation of a new cluster perhaps with stellar winds driving the dust residue into a outer ring?

[MartinB]

Love this treatment Olly.  Spectacular data.  The colour isn't just about aesthetics (although, in this respect, I am a bit of a tart!), it presents information effectively, in this instance the Ha and dust regions. On the downside, possibly, the dust has a bit of a splashed on Jackson Pollock look to it although less so on the revised version.  Also, the saturation has brought out the red halos around the yellow stars.  No, I don't think you need to apologise for the saturation, it works for me anyway.

Exquisite work 

[Quatermass]

Wow that one really grabs you buy the eyeballs.

[ollypenrice]

Love this treatment Olly.  Spectacular data.  The colour isn't just about aesthetics (although, in this respect, I am a bit of a tart!), it presents information effectively, in this instance the Ha and dust regions. On the downside, possibly, the dust has a bit of a splashed on Jackson Pollock look to it although less so on the revised version.  Also, the saturation has brought out the red halos around the yellow stars.  No, I don't think you need to apologise for the saturation, it works for me anyway.

Exquisite work 

I'm relieved that you like it, Martin. I think of you as Mr M33 and coiner of the 'Bling look' phrase!

Thanks for pointing up the tweaks needed.

I really think that old Jackson Pollock had a hand in M33 because it has a speckled look even in Rob Gendler's 25 panel mosaic from the Subaru Telescope; http://www.google.fr/imgres?sa=X&espv=210&es_sm=122&biw=1536&bih=764&tbm=isch&tbnid=18XnLOJrwugRaM:&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_11,_1952_(painting)&docid=NzYPgLj3EBiRWM&imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/2/2d/20121101165259!Blue_Poles_(Jackson_Pollock_painting).jpg&w=654&h=284&ei=LGpxUtmiN8eo0AWS6oGIDQ&zoom=1

Ooops, sorry, wrong link.

http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/M33-Subaru-Gendler-S.html  (I'm not claiming to have resolved the same speckles, though!)

Olly

[Scott]

This is absolutely superb Olly. It's a target I plan on imaging this year (although I'm only using a Dslr and finding 30 hrs in the midlands might be tricky ).

Just wondering though... It's 30 hrs of data but how long (roughly) is spent on the processing of something like this? Does processing get easier with more data or is there more work with more data? 

Thanks for sharing your wonderful work with us. They are truly inspirational in the full sense of the word.

Scott

[ollypenrice]

This is absolutely superb Olly. It's a target I plan on imaging this year (although I'm only using a Dslr and finding 30 hrs in the midlands might be tricky ).

Just wondering though... It's 30 hrs of data but how long (roughly) is spent on the processing of something like this? Does processing get easier with more data or is there more work with more data? 

Thanks for sharing your wonderful work with us. They are truly inspirational in the full sense of the word.

Scott

Thanks.

Erm, let's think. if all your data is shot coherently and intended to make a single picture then more data probably makes processing easier and certainly more enjoyable. You gain on not having to do noise reduction but, then again, you have more faint data to tease out. It may take about as long but the work is more satisfying with more data. You do more perfecting and less fixing.

If combining images from different scopes and focal lengths and cameras then that takes a while, as here, but Registar is phenomenally efficient and speeds it up no end.

Olly

[robbie c]

Another brilliant image fantastic you turn out some very good work 

[sharkmelley]

However, I don't think you have a true analogy in that we know how saturated our landscopes and our wives look and we try to match that visually perceived saturation in our images. On the other hand nobody sees nebula colour to any significant degree in telescopes or with naked eye. Yes, the colours in our picures are more or less 'real' in the sense that they are measured and calibrated, but how should we define reasonable saturation? The moment we see any colour at all we are moving away from what is visually natural.

Although we rarely see the colours through our telescopes, we are using the same camera to record the scene as we do when photographing landscapes and family.  After background neutralisation and RGB balancing (maybe against a known star) we can then look at the RGB values of different objects in that image.  Some of those objects will have "saturated" colour and some not.  I would argue that to be faithful to the original recorded scene, the ratios of R:G:B in each object should be preserved during the main processing sequence e.g stretching operations. Photoshop has the Colour Sampler tool to allow such things to be monitored.  Of course, at the end of the day, our goal is usually not to remain faithful to the original data but to create a pleasing image and that's where the opportunity for artistic flair comes in, just as photographers might do for landscapes, family portraits and for artistic works.  After all art is extremely subjective!

Mark

[ollypenrice]

Yes, the ratio of R,G and B should be preserved for accuracy's sake (and I try to do that) but that is not the same as the intensity of colour. As we look through our scopes the intensity of non stellar colour is approximately zero most of the time but the whole point of imaging is to render into visibilty that which is not visible at the EP. It's subjective, certainly.

I think I've moved on in terms of what I think seems reasonable in terms of colour, partly because I now take far more data than I did (so I have more colour information) and partly because others are doing the same and taking the intensity up with them. In the past I think my taste was shaped by film images with low colour intensity. It often happens that I feel a certain nostalgia for a softer style when I see much more softly processed images than I now produce but I have that information and want to use it.

Curiously this M33 has gone down well in France where high saturation is usually dismissed as 'American processing.' It's here in the UK that the colour intensity has proved controversial. 

Olly

[sharkmelley]

Here in the UK we rarely get the opportunity to acquire such high quality data as you have in this M33 image, so the question of whether or not to boost saturation rarely arises!

Mark

[Scott]

Thanks.

Erm, let's think. if all your data is shot coherently and intended to make a single picture then more data probably makes processing easier and certainly more enjoyable. You gain on not having to do noise reduction but, then again, you have more faint data to tease out. It may take about as long but the work is more satisfying with more data. You do more perfecting and less fixing.

If combining images from different scopes and focal lengths and cameras then that takes a while, as here, but Registar is phenomenally efficient and speeds it up no end.

Olly

Thanks for your reply Olly, No more or less work, just different more satisfying work with a greater end result. Sounds good to me.

Scott

[Nephalem]

that's stunning :-)

[morimarty]

Thats a real beauty Olly,