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M16 - NOT work in progress - data pays off!

perfrej

By perfrej
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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perfrej

perfrej

Posted
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So, I posted an Eagle a while back and said it was a work in progress. It was. I am now closing this one for now and can only note that more data pays off.

This rendition has almost no processing, no noise reduction and no sharpening. It is mildly stretched, color assembled, color adjusted and that's about it. Took all of fifteen minutes if we don't count the pre-processing, registration and image integration.

I used my remote setup at Les Granges in southern France (Olly Penrice's premises), consisting of a 10Micron GM2000HPS, a TEC-140 with TEC flattener, and a QSI-683 with Astrodon filters.

All subs were shot unguided and with an exposure time of 15 minutes each at various times over the summer. The TEC focal length is about 1000mm.

35 x 15 min Ha

31 x 15 min O3

41 x 15 min S2

BIAS, flats, no darks.

Full res PNG at http://filer.frejvall.se/M16-v2.png

Full res JPG at http://filer.frejvall.se/M16-v2.jpg

All the best,

Per

M16-v2-1024.jpg

Crop of the Pillars of Creation:

M16-v2-crop.jpg

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Geordie mc

Geordie mc

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Lovely work Per. I believe Olly gets about 300 clear nights a year. It would take me a very long time to collect that much data here in Northumberland. We get about 30 if we are lucky. I'm on holiday in Charente at the moment and have had more clear nights than the rest of the year put together back home. Your setup clearly has a lot of advantages. Well done on the Eagle and I look forward to seeing your next target.

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strutsinaction

strutsinaction

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Very nice, Per, fantastic detail! That number and length of subs would have taken me several years to capture, the UK skies being as they are (at least where I live)  :smiley:

Just wondered if this capture would have been even better (if that were possible) if the camera was rotated so you got more of the Eagle in?

Regards

John

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perfrej

perfrej

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Thanks all,

Yes, a lot of data surely is easier to process than trying to squeeze it all out of a few subs. And we do have the nights at Olly's, that's for sure.

As for rotation... I do everything in the same rotation, which is portrait mode. I do not have a rotator and haven't really felt the need for one. Perhaps adding a pane on each side of this... Hmmm...

/per

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perfrej

perfrej

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I did fiddle a bit with it... Couldn't help myself. Some really gentle touches in PI improved it a bit. :)

Here's a crop (double res here)

M16-PI-crop.jpg

That TEC-140 is something! 

The PI additions were two. First I applied an ACDNR with a lightness mask, then a very, very small unsharp mask. I still think the more or less unprocessed original holds, though ;)

/per

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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I missed this! Great stuff. Of course, as an inverterate processing fanatic I'd love to get into some bits of detail work but it's great to see an essentially unprocessed image to demonstrate that lots of data make quality results.

Between the two red stars at the top of the uncropped image you have what Yves and I christened The Running Ninja Nebula. Can you see him?  :grin:

Olly

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perfrej

perfrej

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Thanks again, all!

Olly, the running man is hereby identified. He can be pulled out some more selectively, but that would defeat the goal of this image; essentially unprocessed.

If you want to fiddle around with the data you can have the three pre-stretched stacks as TIFFs or FITs...

/per

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ChrisLX200

ChrisLX200

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It's a lovely detailed image Per, but I doubt I could resist ruining.. I mean processing the data if it were mine :-) I confess I fail to see a running ninja in my own M16 image (but then I never saw a wizard in the Wizard Nebula either...!)

ChrisH

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perfrej

perfrej

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Thanks, guys!

I am in a good spot, Pieter, that is for sure. When it gets darker I'll do some NB from my balcony rig, hopefully soon with my new Baader CaFl Travel Companion, which is currently awaiting its focuser (the Steeltrack Diamond). That spot is nowhere near as good as Olly's, but I still get very good results from there. It is 14 km from Stockholm city centre.

ChrisH, I did some additional processing, but I have not done anything that doesn't affect the image as a whole. I am sure that the running man, for instance, could be enhanced, but that would spoil the balance a bit. Like cheating.

Toxic, it is not entirely unprocessed, but almost. Second rendition has a bit more done, but it is still very little.

/per

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