M33-Red Channel Stand Alone

[Rodd]

I had not intended to post until I had completed the entire image.  But, as usual, I could not help myself.  I did not expect to see so much structure revealed.  I also remember that M33 looks stippled, and wanted to see if that was true in all filters.  It does appear to be true in red. 

TOA 130 at F7.7 with STT-8300 and Astrodon series E Red filter.  32 10 minute subs, fully calibrated, processed as a stand alone image.

 

[Filroden]

Now that’s a lot of fuzzies! It’s going to make a great colour image. I find M33 a much better imaging target than M31. It just feels more galactic.

[Allinthehead]

A great start Rodd. I wonder what causes that noise effect.

[Filroden]

11 minutes ago, Allinthehead said:

A great start Rodd. I wonder what causes that noise effect.

I think it’s just part of the galaxy structure. It feels like it’s on the verge of being resolved rather than being noise.

[Rodd]

1 hour ago, Filroden said:

Now that’s a lot of fuzzies! It’s going to make a great colour image. I find M33 a much better imaging target than M31. It just feels more galactic.

Thanks Ken--at the right focal length I agree.  I shot it once with the televue at 430-540 (can't remember if I used reducer) but it looked pretty small.  But at this scale it sure does look like a spiral galaxy.

Rodd

[Rodd]

49 minutes ago, Allinthehead said:

A great start Rodd. I wonder what causes that noise effect.

See below

37 minutes ago, Filroden said:

I think it’s just part of the galaxy structure. It feels like it’s on the verge of being resolved rather than being noise.

According to some folks who shot loads and loads of subs it does not go away, so it is not noise.  I think you are correct,  its stars and tiny structure too small to be resolved clearly.  Here is a version with less of that effect.  I used a small amount of noise control. 

[Rodd]

I reprocessed the stack--using drizzle integration.  The clarity has gone way up.  I did not really use more sharpening or more noise control.  I was more judicious with my histogram adjustments however.  Note NGC 604 at bottom of M33.  A crop of this nebula has been added.  The drizzle image has not been down-sampled, so full resolution viewing may be a bit too much.

NGC 604

 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

18 hours ago, Filroden said:

I think it’s just part of the galaxy structure. It feels like it’s on the verge of being resolved rather than being noise.

I think that's probably right. It's a relatively small galaxy compared to M31, approximately 25 billion stars versus 1 trillion, and is forming stars at a higher rate.

[cfpendock]

That is interesting.  Did you dither between subs?

Chris

[Rodd]

2 hours ago, cfpendock said:

That is interesting.  Did you dither between subs?

Chris

Yes...I always dither.  Maxim DL does it for me--its just a setting.  It adds about a minute (70 sec in my case) to each sub (a delay is required for the guider to recover from the dither and commence undistrubed guiding again)

Rodd