Jump to content

Banner.jpg.b89429c566825f6ab32bcafbada449c9.jpg

M81 and M82+IFN - 35h OSC


ONIKKINEN

Recommended Posts

M81 and M82, an iconic duo presented here with a rich background including an elusive extended halo of M81, IFN both on our end of space and M81's end and of course an uncountable number of faint background galaxies just about everywhere in the image. I have been sitting on the image for a while now and was not sure if i liked the product yet, as it was challenging to process in a way that gives the extremely bright (for the image) galaxies, the ridiculously faint dusty parts and the background objects enough room to be observable but not detract from the experience of viewing the others. I think this version sits quite well with me so i will go with that. Image scale is about 2'' per pixel here and around 10 of the 35h are with an Antlia Triband RGB ultra filter, to try and uncover some of the Ha emissions a bit better.

Composite8-stretch1-stretch2.thumb.jpg.e1fb14883b57c2413844cd226e53864b.jpg

Started imaging in late December and have poured every second of available decent quality clear sky on it since which totals 8 nights 😬. Average sky conditions would probably fall between bortle 4 and 5, somewhere around SQM 20.6 i suppose. 2 nights had very bright aurora that lifted the background electron rate by 2-3x for a few hours and butchered the background gradients but those are not that hard to get rid of so nothing lost. Original plan was to image this all the way to the end of the imaging year 4 weeks from now, but current forecasts indicate that the currently ongoing moonless period will have no clear sky, and the final moonless period of the astro year in April will have short nights so this might be all she wrote for this year.

ASTAP annotated image with HyperLeda galaxies for those who want to cruise around the image and look for the most distant object shown. Upscaled to make it easier to see the small fuzzies. The vast majority of background objects are not annotated here which i find very interesting. I have been cruising around the image and the furthest object with a definite distance i can find is the galaxy cluster just above M82 with approx 3 billion light years. But there are so many barely a pixel type fuzzies here that my educated guess is that some are quite a lot further away than that but which one and how far, i cant tell right now.

Composite8-s2-s1blend-flip-150-annot.thumb.jpg.8e42a69d6d516c7b3308596c51c357a3.jpg

Comments, criticism, suggestions all welcome!

Thanks for looking

  • Like 17
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's got something to say and no one rendition can say everything contained in the data. I wonder if lowering the higher brightnesses might let you find more star and galaxy colour, though?

It's a strong image.

Olly

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

That's got something to say and no one rendition can say everything contained in the data. I wonder if lowering the higher brightnesses might let you find more star and galaxy colour, though?

It's a strong image.

Olly

The problem i have with trying to go to a HDR type process where everything is allowed to be at its best colour and levels wise is that the image starts to look too flat to my liking - like the galaxies and dust start to meld into one and its difficult to say which is which which bothers me a bit. Its partially intentional for this reason that the bright objects are a little bit on the too bright side. This rendition is the result of 2 different stretches exported from Siril and blended for best (or least worst) effect for objects where applicable, in Photoshop of course.

Will definitely process this again, and again and again. The file name (composite8) should also give some clues as to how many attempts the learning process went through  :D

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's nice. Also nice to see the annotation. Saves me putting it though ASTAP myself. I just love cruizing round deep fields :)

Perhasp's you could re-title this thread: "I imaged M81 & M82 so you don't have to!"  :)

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Paul M said:

That's nice. Also nice to see the annotation. Saves me putting it though ASTAP myself. I just love cruizing round deep fields :)

Perhasp's you could re-title this thread: "I imaged M81 & M82 so you don't have to!"  :)

I also would prefer to image something else next year, which is why its gotten all the hours of the past few months. Next years galaxy season will be spent on something else, not sure what yet. Probably some obscure Abell cluster as i too am a fan of deep fields.

1 hour ago, 900SL said:

Nice work Oskari, and depressing to hear the season is going to end the way it started when I arrived  😂

 

This season was not too bad actually. 8 Moonless or not too much Moonlight type nights in 3 months is a luxury one shouldn't get used to round here. Last year my "big time dump" target was the coma cluster, which got only 9 hours so quite happy with this years weather so far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.