M87 Relativistic Jet Motion 1999-2018

[matt_baker]

Relativistic jet motion from M87.

Raw data taken from MAST archive from propositions dating from 1999 to 2018.

Each set contained 4 frames of which I picked the best one from each year, manually aligning and rotating in photoshop by using difference blending mode and free transforming.

Applied false colour and smoothed in SAOImageDS9

Instrument: STIS/NUV-MAMA

Filter: MIRNUV

[tomato]

Brilliant! Pity you can't enter it in the 'Cosmos In Motion' challenge.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Nice work. The jet can be picked up in amateur scopes, but it's only a few pixels long.

[matt_baker]

Thanks!

[matt_baker]

Went back and stacked all 4 this time instead to reduce the noise significantly and spent more time trying to properly align.

Also made the GIF reversible to better represent the motion

https://www.astrobin.com/full/1kus37/0/?nc=user

 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Good to see some public data being used with some imagination to produce something new. There are lots of resources out there which can be used to complement our own images.

Could you have used Registar to align the frames for you?

[matt_baker]

26 minutes ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Good to see some public data being used with some imagination to produce something new. There are lots of resources out there which can be used to complement our own images.

Could you have used Registar to align the frames for you?

I did think of using registar but I don't have a licence so I can't save the registered subs.

It's also the fact that the images are at different rotations

Edited April 2, 2021 by matt_baker

[Knight of Clear Skies]

3 hours ago, matt_baker said:

I did think of using registar but I don't have a licence so I can't save the registered subs

I held off buying it for a long time as it just does one thing, but it's made a huge difference to my imaging. For example I had a go at blending an Ha image into a very quick colour image, then blended in some data from the WISE IR telescope.

Edited April 2, 2021 by Knight of Clear Skies

[ramdom]

Very clever and cool!  My nominee for the cosmos in motion challenge (do they have to based on your own data?). 

--Ram