NGC 2841 a galaxy far far away in Ursa Major

[gorann]

This post may provoke some puritans here but it has been cloudy in my patch of the planet for over a month, so I finally allowed my itchy processing fingers to throw themselves at public data from the Liverpool Telescope - LT (http://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/). Wim van Berlo recently downloaded and stacked the data, and was kind enough to share the stacks it with me. Very convenient since down loading subs from their database is rather tedious, so thanks Wim and good luck with your knee surgery tomorrow!

Some of you may know that Wim and I have on occasion taken comfort in processing LT data when our skies have prevented us from collecting our own data. And this beautiful flocculent galaxy is rather small and almost out of reach for most of us, at least not as close up as this with 20 meters of focal length.

The telescope is a 2 m RC on La Palma Island, as I understand is much used for requests by UK school classes. Their data is public after a year.

Data used:
Red 35 frames (SDSS-r filter)
Green 16 frames (Bessell-V filter)
Blue 20 frames (Bessell-B filter)
About 100 min total exposure time

Processed maily in PS, and a bit in PI. No NR used at all.

 

Edited November 25, 2019 by gorann

[x6gas]

It's a lovely process Göran.

[gorann]

3 minutes ago, x6gas said:

It's a lovely process Göran.

Thanks a lot!

[Jkulin]

Hi Göran,

I may be to use your words a "Puritan", but you made you declaration from the outset, so all can understand, beautiful image and processing, even if that isn't for me.

Indeed it is now at least 6 weeks since we had a clear night, I do wonder when it will end or will it be another "Last year Event"!

[gorann]

25 minutes ago, Jkulin said:

Hi Göran,

I may be to use your words a "Puritan", but you made you declaration from the outset, so all can understand, beautiful image and processing, even if that isn't for me.

Indeed it is now at least 6 weeks since we had a clear night, I do wonder when it will end or will it be another "Last year Event"!

Thanks! After eternal gray skies (probably 6 weeks here also), there may be some hope here next weekend. After that I am off to Queensland for a month. Could be cloudy there also but I will bring a SW Star Adevnturer, some lenses and a cooled CMOS, see how it goes.

If the cloud cover persists here in northern Europe, why not log into http://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/ and give it a try👹

[Jkulin]

Just now, gorann said:

If the cloud cover persists here in northern Europe, why not log into http://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/ and give it a try

Thanks Göran, as beautiful as your images are, it isn't for me.

[Star101]

Great image Göran and nice processing too. 

I was hoping to use iTelescope to image some thing in the Southern Hemisphere this weekend due to the cloud cover here but so far have not decided on a target.

I need to check out the Liverpool Telescope public data sometime.

[Ouroboros]

Yeah, Puritan here. Would it really appear that blue? If that is we could see it close up ..... and with eyes as sensitive. 

[Paul M]

I just like seeing beautiful images, however they are derived!

 

[MarsG76]

Fantastic image... love it...

 

[alan potts]

Lovely image and processing, it's a week since I had a clear sky, can you believe that.

Alan

[gorann]

15 hours ago, Star101 said:

Great image Göran and nice processing too. 

I was hoping to use iTelescope to image some thing in the Southern Hemisphere this weekend due to the cloud cover here but so far have not decided on a target.

I need to check out the Liverpool Telescope public data sometime.

Thanks a lot, and good luck with iTelescope!

[gorann]

14 hours ago, Paul M said:

I just like seeing beautiful images, however they are derived!

 

Thanks Paul!

[gorann]

14 hours ago, MarsG76 said:

Fantastic image... love it...

 

Thanks, much appreciated!

[gorann]

10 hours ago, alan potts said:

Lovely image and processing, it's a week since I had a clear sky, can you believe that.

Alan

Poor you😱, but many thanks anyway Alan!

[gorann]

15 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

Yeah, Puritan here. Would it really appear that blue? If that is we could see it close up ..... and with eyes as sensitive. 

There was a thread here on SGL years ago (I think I started it) about what we would see of nebulae and galaxies if we got close enough, and I think most were of the opinon that the closer we get the less we see of the shapes we can see at a distance. I assume that our own galaxy would look a bit like NGC 2841 from a distance, but being here it looks just like a lot of stars on a dark sky. Regarding the colour, it is blue (a lot of signal from the blue filter) but how blue is dependent on how much I saturate it. For the colours I was looking a bit on the NGC 2841 image by Adam Block:

http://annesastronomynews.com/photo-gallery-ii/galaxies-clusters/ngc-2841-by-adam-block/

Edited November 25, 2019 by gorann

[GiorgioF]

Shame on you....

I spent last two hours counting all the durst clouds of the galaxy and admiring all the small details you catch, all the curves fading each other in the colour shades.

The almost perfect balance with stars and starless is amazing.

 

[gorann]

2 minutes ago, GiorgioF said:

Shame on you....

I spent last two hours counting all the durst clouds of the galaxy and admiring all the small details you catch, all the curves fading each other in the colour shades.

The almost perfect balance with stars and starless is amazing.

 

Giorgio, you are just too kind. Thanks a lot!

[wimvb]

On 24/11/2019 at 19:35, gorann said:

so thanks Wim and good luck with your knee surgery tomorrow!

Surgery went fine, thanks. 

23 hours ago, gorann said:

Regarding the colour, it is blue (a lot of signal from the blue filter) but how blue is dependent on how much I saturate it. For the colours I was looking a bit on the NGC 2841 image by Adam Block:

http://annesastronomynews.com/photo-gallery-ii/galaxies-clusters/ngc-2841-by-adam-block/

Beautiful rendering, Göran. 

Regarding the colours, even with the same dataset, your image and mine came out different. In my opinion, the colours with which we depict DSOs will always be a matter of personal taste. Although we have more or less scientific methods for colour calibration, those only give a foundation to work on. Later in a process we constantly make decisions and experiment to get to a rendering we like. This is the artistic aspect of our hobby. It is like painters sitting at their easel in front of the same subject, and with very much the same materials, but producing widely varying renditions of that subject. 

[gorann]

3 hours ago, wimvb said:

Surgery went fine, thanks. 

Beautiful rendering, Göran. 

Regarding the colours, even with the same dataset, your image and mine came out different. In my opinion, the colours with which we depict DSOs will always be a matter of personal taste. Although we have more or less scientific methods for colour calibration, those only give a foundation to work on. Later in a process we constantly make decisions and experiment to get to a rendering we like. This is the artistic aspect of our hobby. It is like painters sitting at their easel in front of the same subject, and with very much the same materials, but producing widely varying renditions of that subject. 

Thanks Wim! I really like your comparison to painters - at least I am not into astrophotography for any scientific reason but merely to make images that please me and hopefuly others. Our eyes and brains are very subjective regarding their sensitivity to light and colour and that leaves us a lot of freedom. Blue is blue, yellow is yellow, red is red and usually there is no green in space (except in Hubble images) but we can feel quite free regading how much we emphasize the blue, yellow and red. Indeed, I noticed on several occations that it is not only up to peronal taste but also intraindivisual taste - meaning what I like one week, I may feel an urge to adjust the next week,

Edited November 26, 2019 by gorann