Monkey Head 3 ways

[MartinB]

Gathered over the past week on moon lit nights.

Scope: Tak FSQ106

Camera: QSI 532wsg

Filters: Baader 7/8nm 

Exposures: all 20mins Hax14, OIIIx9 and SII x7

Captured, calibrated and combined with Maxim.  Processed in PS

3 versions - a plain Ha, bicolour with OIII mapped to blue and green, and a tricolour Hubble palette.  On my monitor the Ha has come out looking weird and the bicolour black clipped, oh well!

 

 

[MilwaukeeLion]

Amazing images you have here.

[theo]

Very fine images Martin!! I love all three versions with the bi-colour probably just edging it. Excellent.

Pete

[laudropb]

Marvellous images. You can actually see the monkey's head.

[Davey-T]

Beautiful Monkey Martin, I used to image it regularly until the neighbours trees got too high 

Dave

[steppenwolf]

Excellent work, Martin - one of the fascinations of AP for me is the numerous ways that we can present our data.

[MartinB]

Thanks everyone for the nice comments.  My preference, like Peter, is for the bicolour.  It seems to bring out the OIII more and my wife likes it because it is the one that looks most like a Monkey's Head.  In fact she seemed to get quite excited about it but then she is a very kind and diplomatic woman!

[wimvb]

Very fine images. I also like the bicolour best. As for the clipping; the background looks lighter than the surrounding border from the forum theme. And space is a dark place anyway.

Great results.

[DaveS]

Just to be contrary (There's always one) I prefere the HST version, but I guess that's just me.

BTW the title of this thread puts me in mind of something Heston Blumenthal might come up with.

[MartinB]

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

Very fine images. I also like the bicolour best. As for the clipping; the background looks lighter than the surrounding border from the forum theme. And space is a dark place anyway.

Great results.

Thanks Wim.  There is something very iffy about the way my new (and expensive) monitor displays uploaded jpegs.  Fine on ipad, phone and work monitor.  Weird.

Just now, DaveS said:

Just to be contrary (There's always one) I prefere the HST version, but I guess that's just me.

BTW the title of this thread puts me in mind of something Heston Blumenthal might come up with.

Yes, it brought an odd culinary concoction to mind!

[swag72]

I really like the Bi colour - It looks much more 3D whereas the HST looks a little flat in comparison. Great images though Martin

[Starlight 1]

Wife just come in and said I like number 3 alot . Now she tell me to do this one as well ,Thanks Martin ? is 3 bi-colour or hst .

[MartinB]

Thanks Sara and Starlight.  3 is the bicolour

[ollypenrice]

19 hours ago, MartinB said:

Thanks everyone for the nice comments.  My preference, like Peter, is for the bicolour.  It seems to bring out the OIII more and my wife likes it because it is the one that looks most like a Monkey's Head.  In fact she seemed to get quite excited about it but then she is a very kind and diplomatic woman!

I must send her my images for comment!

Bicolour for me. The Hubble is very dramatic but, as an RGB imager fighting to get rid of green from everything I do, I always struggle with the Hubble look. The bicolour is very close indeed to our recent result in HaOIIRGB. The pure NB approach finds more structure than RGB and looks more interesting as a result. A very nice trio.

Olly

[MartinB]

Thanks Olly, feel free to send Jackie your images, she may change to default mode and congratulate you on taking a picture of so many stars!  

Lots of people do seem to be eliminating green from their tricolour narrobands these days but one of the main ideas is to show what's going on in the nebula, there's a lot of green and it seems a shame to suppress it completely.  I've decided that I'm always going to leave some green in the image.  Tempted to get some RGB stars but will probably never get round to it.

[Barry-Wilson]

Love the colour palette in the bi-colour - really feels like the nebula is 'emitting'.  The Ha version has a natural look as though you've captured the nebula as observed - great.

[Uranium235]

Nice image Martin. Good colour and unforced processing.

[MartinB]

Thanks Barry and Rob.  I have to make a conscious effort not to wring the data's neck!

[MartinB]

Olly has very kindly sent me some RGB stars from his Monkey Head image so these have now been added to the bicolour image.  I have done some further processing to match them with my image so any dodgy appearances are purely down to me!

 

[cfpendock]

That's now the best of both worlds!  Maybe my monitor, but are the stars a tad blue?  I think this is an outstanding image.

Chris

[MartinB]

9 hours ago, cfpendock said:

That's now the best of both worlds!  Maybe my monitor, but are the stars a tad blue?  I think this is an outstanding image.

Chris

Thanks Chris.  There do seem to be quite a lot of blue stars in there but I'm guessing that's how they are.

[matt-c]

Great pictures, mono and bi colour for me (especially with the rgb) but all are fantastic.

It still blows me away how much it looks like a monkeys head, makes me nostalgic for temple of doom.

[ollypenrice]

Hmmm, I can't help thinking that this might be the optimal way to image nebulae - bicolour HaOIII and RGB stars. The nebula is so fluffy and diffuse-looking. In braodband they tend to end up looking rather solid.

I reckon this is the best Monkeyhead I've seen.

Olly

[MartinB]

Thanks a Matt and Olly.  I figure that I'm doing an HST it's worth having a look at the bicolour as well.  I suppose I should also take the trouble to get some RGB stars as well although that's a bit of a faff with a 5 position filter wheel (I'm just being lazy)

[strutsinaction]

Superb! As Chris pointed out earlier, the RGB stars though do look a bit blue on my monitor too. Did Olly's RGB stars also look that blue? Regardless, really impressive capture and processing.

Regards
John