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Bewitched Witch...

ollypenrice

By ollypenrice
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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First one of the year, folks. We've had a cracking run of skies and I did this over the last four nights in what's now the single Tak 106, since Tom's camera has moved next door to his new robotic shed. Mesu 200/Atik 11000/Baader filters.

Luminance 20x15mns, RGB 9x10mns per colour, Ha 13x20 mns. Total just short of 14 hours. This target is beset by challenges. There is a veritable air display of satellites in this region, each sub copping four or five. Then there were off shot flares blazing across two parts of the image.  We had great seeing for the first two nights but then set two new world records for bad seeing after that. Never seen anything like it. FWHM went from 0.88 on night 2 to 2.3 on night 3! Fortunately I got the L on the first two nights so soft colour wasn't too hard to deal with and there is no fine detail in the Ha.  (The Ha gives the image a real lift but is incredibly faint. Had anyone seen what I had to do to get it into the image they'd have notified the Police.)

Anyway, enough excuses. Here she is...

441075942_WITCHHaLRGB!4Hrs.thumb.jpg.3a21ac2bf3661049049d4eaf5e4c61cb.jpg

Olly

 

 

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jjosefsen

jjosefsen

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Very nice, I don't think I've ever seen the "smoke" more clearly than this, certainly not from "amateur gear". ?

Does the difference in seeing have anything to do with the funky artifacts around that bright star in the bottom right quadrant? Or is it related to the Ha?

Very impressed that you can actually see "the bar" in that really small Galaxy middle bottom. ?

I often look upon the European weather sat images with envy, when my gaze drifts to your neck of the woods Olly. I threaten the wife with immigrating down there! So far she has grounded me.. Perhaps one day..

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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1 hour ago, jjosefsen said:

Very nice, I don't think I've ever seen the "smoke" more clearly than this, certainly not from "amateur gear". ?

Does the difference in seeing have anything to do with the funky artifacts around that bright star in the bottom right quadrant? Or is it related to the Ha?

Very impressed that you can actually see "the bar" in that really small Galaxy middle bottom. ?

I often look upon the European weather sat images with envy, when my gaze drifts to your neck of the woods Olly. I threaten the wife with immigrating down there! So far she has grounded me.. Perhaps one day..

I think it's just a difficult star. It's made slightly more difficult if you add an Ha layer because it sits right in a patch of emission. I doubt that the poor seeing would greatly affect it, really. What I should do is go back and redo it using just the RGB data. I might have a play with that now.

There really is a lot to be said for SE France, though you need to be as far as possible from the coast without getting too close to Lyon!

Olly

A tweak to the star using RGB only. I suspect that the dust in the region also softens the stars though the seeing didn't help.

1373448016_WITCHHaLRGB!4HrsBLUEUPWEBSF.thumb.jpg.17a3d2349ac02d17387995a2460f9e90.jpg

 

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carastro

carastro

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I really love it Olly, super smooth full magnification too.  

I can totally agree with you about all the geostationery satellites, I tried to image this at Astro camp over the last couple of months -  as you say every single sub had multiple trails, both months running, and added star  (edit) plane trails to boot.  Unfortunately I did not get enough data to stack them out and had to do it by hand.

My FOV is not really big enough for this and I am tempted to use my DSLR while the weather is cold, but not going to be able to get to a dark location, so probably a lost cause anyway.

Carole 

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Allinthehead

Allinthehead

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Wonderful image Olly. I've been working on this for a while now owing to terrible weather and understand just how difficult it is. Our framing is identical although mine is a 2 panel mosaic. If mine will turn out half as good this i'll be chuffed. Your smokey blue and deep red make a lovely contrast.

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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2 hours ago, Allinthehead said:

Wonderful image Olly. I've been working on this for a while now owing to terrible weather and understand just how difficult it is. Our framing is identical although mine is a 2 panel mosaic. If mine will turn out half as good this i'll be chuffed. Your smokey blue and deep red make a lovely contrast.

Good luck with it.  I've always liked Witch Heads with an Ha layer best. It seems to give the reflection nebula something to stand out against. The Ha really is faint though. the fact that, in this shot, the Ha and the dust make an X shape was pure good luck. I had no choice about how to orientate the main object.

Olly

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Tom OD

Tom OD

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Excellent Olly,

As you say the amount of satellite trails in each sub in this region makes for a tricky processing.

I love the criss cross Ha and the Witch, it really adds to the image, and give it depth. As a bonus I do like deep Red Ha, almost Maroon.

Tom.

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Guest

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One of my favourite astro images to date - can't believe the depth and atmosphere this has - incredible (I'll stop with the adjectives now, but it's difficult to do lol)

This would look fantastic, poster size, hanging on a wall.

As for all those sat/plane trails - of course if you were using CMOS with shorter exposures you could just throw away the blighted ones.....hahahaha! only jokin (re recent conversation with @CCD Imager ) 

Great and inspirational work as ever Olly.

David

 

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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7 minutes ago, David_L said:

 

As for all those sat/plane trails - of course if you were using CMOS with shorter exposures you could just throw away the blighted ones.....hahahaha! only jokin (re recent conversation with @CCD Imager ) 

David

 

Thanks, David. Much appreciated.

In truth you wouldn't get many subs, even short ones, without sat trails in this region. I would never throw away a sub because it had a trail, either! Eek, the very idea... :icon_mrgreen:  I relied on a reasonable sub count and AstroArt's sigma clip to do most of the work. I did remove some whoppers with the 'remove line' tool as well. Once into the post processing stage I used Noel's Actions to deal with the residue. He has Vertical or Horizontal Banding Noise Reduction which works a treat. (If your sat trails are not vertical or horizontal you temporarily rotate the image till they are. In this case the sats seem to be in polar orbits and ran down the image vertically, which was good of them!)) I use this tool on a bottom layer and then erase the top over the trails so as not to have the action messing with the whole image.

The off-shot flares from bright stars were more of a pain but what's Photoshop there for? Thuggery, of course!

FLARES.jpg.08863cf09103442216fc08141eb774dc.jpg

Olly

 

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8 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Thanks, David. Much appreciated.

In truth you wouldn't get many subs, even short ones, without sat trails in this region. I would never throw away a sub because it had a trail, either! Eek, the very idea... :icon_mrgreen:  I relied on a reasonable sub count and AstroArt's sigma clip to do most of the work. I did remove some whoppers with the 'remove line' tool as well. Once into the post processing stage I used Noel's Actions to deal with the residue. He has Vertical or Horizontal Banding Noise Reduction which works a treat. (If your sat trails are not vertical or horizontal you temporarily rotate the image till they are. In this case the sats seem to be in polar orbits and ran down the image vertically, which was good of them!)) I use this tool on a bottom layer and then erase the top over the trails so as not to have the action messing with the whole image.

The off-shot flares from bright stars were more of a pain but what's Photoshop there for? Thuggery, of course!

Olly

 

Excellent guidance - thanks Olly ?  

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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10 hours ago, MikeODay said:

Lovely image.  To my eyes it has a strong 3d feel.  

With such a prominent main subject I only just noticed the large number of small bright galaxies in the image.

I think that's the charm of the Ha layer on this target. it gives the impression of lying between the depths of space and the Witch, so creating foreground and background. I've always liked versions with Ha the best but my previous Witch was too tightly framed to benefit. In truth I think the Ha is physically associated with the dusty structures because it clearly traced the 'head' shape.

Without Ha it was like this:

755697004_WITCHLRGBNoHa..thumb.jpg.1ce4b85d1394d9fb2d90255843103300.jpg

Olly

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