M32 Core Questions

[Rodd]

The first image is a cop of my completed M32 image.  Its as good as the data will permit and I am done tinkering.  However--I recall stopping work in my pursuit of a resolved core due to the presence of concentric ring like structures in the core when brightness is reduced past a certain point (They are still visible in crop 1, but they are not noticeable at normal viewing (100%)--so they are under the radar so to speak .  I am wondering if the concentric structures in the core are artifacts, or real features.  The second image is a further reduced core that clearly shows the concentric structures to which I refer.  I remember Olly mentioning concentric structures and the memory of those words got be thinking..."maybe these are not artifacts".   There are two types of concentric structures--dark bands, and much finer scale, light lines that are visible only when pixel peeping.  Because I am very near sighted, I see 40-20 when looking at something 12 centimeters from my face without my glasses--so I never need a magnifying glass for 10x magnification.  So when I look at an image with my eye a few centimeters from the screen--that is the ultimate pixel peeping--it reveals everything.  So i see the fine concentric rings without the need to zoom.  Because I do not know how these images will look until I post them--I have included an upsampled second image so the fine, light concentric structures are more visible.

I feel the faint dark structures in this first crop are in fact real structures in M32.  I am not sure about the structures visible in crops 2 and 3.  Any Ideas?  If they are real--I have more work to do!

up-sampled crop-2 for closer inspection.  Note the fine, white rings

[vlaiv]

Not real, posterisation due to processing.

If you want to know what is real / to have a good reference - there is massively detailed image of M31 online, let me find a link to it.

Due to original size of the image (69536px x 22230px and 4.3GB size) here is "zoomable" online version:

https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/

Here is screen grab of core region:

There is some sort of ring like structure, but that is not what is showing in your image.

Btw, I just love that extreme resolution image - as it shows features like this:

That would no doubt be mistaken for a star but is globular cluster. Or maybe this one - Andromeda Pleiades anyone?

 

 

[Rodd]

3 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Not real, posterisation due to processing.

If you want to know what is real / to have a good reference - there is massively detailed image of M31 online, let me find a link to it.

Due to original size of the image (69536px x 22230px and 4.3GB size) here is "zoomable" online version:

https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/

Here is screen grab of core region:

There is some sort of ring like structure, but that is not what is showing in your image.

Btw, I just love that extreme resolution image - as it shows features like this:

That would no doubt be mistaken for a star but is globular cluster. Or maybe this one - Andromeda Pleiades anyone?

 

 

Thanks.  Oh well. I will remove this post as if I’d s big pointless now.   

[vlaiv]

1 minute ago, Rodd said:

Thanks.  Oh well. I will remove this post as if I’d s big pointless now.   

Don't remove it, I went thru the trouble of making those nice screen shots - don't want it to go to waste

 

[Rodd]

Just now, vlaiv said:

Don't remove it, I went thru the trouble of making those nice screen shots - don't want it to go to waste

 

OK--but don't expect high traffic