LBN 603, LDN 1295 & 1296 and Tokyo Gakugei University catalogue (TGU) H807 & H809 (DSLR)

[mftoet]

Draining the last photons out of the Epsilon light bucket...

This is the final image of a productive week at Olly's "Les Granges" in Southern France. Same recipe as the other images posted earlier this week: exposed for 5.5 hours with the Baader modded Canon 5D Mark II - Takahashi Epsilon-180ED combination (5 min. subs @ ISO 1600).

And an annotated version with a map of the area in the sky depicted in the image.

 

[Martin Meredith]

Beautiful image, and great to see the annotations and sky region where these treasures can be found. Its the first time I've heard of the TGU catalogue.

Martin 

[nucdoc]

Stunning Image! Beautifully processed!

 

[MikeODay]

Wonderfull image. Well done.

[wimvb]

Great image. Now you have me convinced; if there is a puff of smoke in the sky, some astronomer will come along and catalogue it. 

Never heard of TGU either, but your image is marvelous. I love it.

Btw, if you shake that bucket, some more photons may drop out. But don't blame me if you have to re-collimate afterwards.

Niet te hard schudden. 

[mftoet]

Thank you. I never heard of the TGU either. I looked it up in SIMBAD. I wonder if the little puff beneath the star "nu Cassiopeiae" is catalogued. It is relatively bright but couldn't find a number. I also wonder if the dust over there is truly bluish because of reflection of star light or if it's just the optical halo of nu Cassiopeiae. 

@wimvb: begrijp ik het goed: een Nederlander woonachtig in Zweden? ;-)

[laudropb]

Very nice image.

[ollypenrice]

I'm not sure how well the yellow bucket, green tube rings and funky red fridge work together aesthetically in the first image but the second is a beauty! The dust is just the right deep brown to my eye and the blue of the hot stars is perfect. As ever, your processing looks invisible. Lovely stuff.

Olly

 

[wimvb]

@ollypenrice: at least it's not a red avalon mount 

@mftoet: klopt. (And now in english, so as not to offend our english speaking friends.) It gives me some advantage over the Netherlands astro-wise: dark nights, more dark sites and dry cold air during the winter. When it isn't cloudy, that is.

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, wimvb said:

@ollypenrice: at least it's not a red avalon mount 

 

Ooooooh!!!!!

Olly

[Tom OD]

Stunning Maurice. So much dust in 5.5 hours. Beautifully processed.

Tom

[mftoet]

Many thanks again. "Invisible processing", that's very nice to hear. 

[pietervdv]

Maurice,

All your images (4 if I caught all of them) from the recent astro trip are of a rarely seen high standard.

Very rich colours, detailed and razorsharp. Your failed astro holiday earlier this year has been neutralised!

 

One thing that strikes me; the bright blue stars show a bit larger halo than I would expect. Something to do with the Baader filter mod or maybe the Epsilon corrector?

But then again, what would I know...  Have not made a colour astrophoto myself in 3 years ... 

 

Pieter

[mftoet]

Thank you Pieter.

Quote

One thing that strikes me; the bright blue stars show a bit larger halo than I would expect. Something to do with the Baader filter mod or maybe the Epsilon corrector?

I see what you mean. Ghosting is hardly inevitable in any telescope/camera system. I don't know if the halos are caused by light scatter on one particular surface (the Baader BCF filter for instance) or if they are the accumulated effect of light scatter on the many glass-air surfaces (the mirrors, the lenses of the corrector, the (clear) low-pass filter I, the Baader BCF filter (which replaced low-pass filter II / IR-cut filter), the microlenses above the photosites).

I tend to strongly increase the saturation/vibrance of the colours in my images, making the halos - the blue ones in particular - more obvious. If the blue halos become too obvious, I decrease the luminance (while increasing the saturation) of the blue/cyan channels, giving all the blue stars an equal luminance/colour stretch. I don't want to reduce the halos too far. Bright star are bright and just like in the old days on film (and on sky charts), brighter stars make larger diameter blobs. I'm not bothered with this (matter of taste). I even like this from an artistic point of view. Take this image for instance: the bright blue star in the top right of the image (ξ Cas) should be big and bright for a proper balance of the image.      

[PatrickGilliland]

Excellent work Maurice - another image to spend ages looking.  The image feels so well balanced and draws you in for a closer look.  Well done again! Paddy