IC405, 410 and 417.

[Guest ollypenrice]

11.5 hours shot in a single night using two Tak FSQ106Ns and Atik 11000s. Way to go! Wheeee..... Thanks to Tom O'Donoghue for the use of his rig. Our guest Alex didn't have great weather for his stay but when you get this kind of data in a night it compensates, I think. (Prior to the Flaming Star rising we got a couple of hours colour for another project, too.)

 

Ha 3Nm, 11x30 mins. RGB 12x10 mins per colour.

 

The processing challenge here was to hold down the field stars which are so numerous and bright as to overwhelm the nebulae in a normal stretch. I tried I new kind of star mask which I thought up in bed the night before. When ( if ) I get it sorted it should allow the imager to increase, easily and progressively, the size of the stars on the mask so that, between stretches, you'd increase the mask sizes. If it works out I'll do a tutorial. For this image I used the mask on a first stretch and then reduced them at the end as well, which isn't ideal.

 

 

Bigger; http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/i-FBFJBML/0/X3/IC405%2011%20HRS%20RED%20DOWN-X3.jpg

 

Or in Ha for the fine structure which is lost in natural colour imaging;

 

 

...and finally our little friends;

 

 

Tadpoles larger; http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/i-Gkq7C5K/0/X3/IC%20410%20Tadpoles-X3.jpg

 

All the best,

 

Olly

[dawson]

Olly, it's great as always. I have next to no knowledge or ability at imaging things outside of the solar system but i do like looking at them. One of the aspects which i find totally absorbing in these kind of images is the background stars; i don't know how many arc minutes/degrees wide these gas clouds are, but it's just the thousands and thousands of faint stars in the backdrop which i find jaw dropping. I'd settle for an image of just this, without the magnificent gas bodies in front!

I also love the white-blue light inside the gas cloud on the right, illuminating it from the inside. That is pretty impressive.

Fascinating and inspiring. Thanks as always for sharing.

James

[BAZ]

Another staggering set of images there Olly. There is just so much to look at, thanks for sharing.

[+Graham]

Awesome stuff as usual Olly.

[Sheila]

yet another set of brilliant images

[+RonC]

Wonderful images Olly!!

[T A WOW]

Totes increds!

[red dwalf]

Brilliant as usual, another desktop picture for my pc i think.

[Allan the Plumber]

wow

[Guest foundaplanet]

My mind still boggles that this kind of result is possible, and from earth to..

Wonderful work. I am curious, Olly do you expect or think you can or will get better at this and if so where and how..

[Guest ollypenrice]

Thanks, and certainly 'yes' to your question. When I go back to images a year old I can usually improve them. Most of this is in processing but capture can be improved as well. I don't see any reason to believe that amateur images won't go on improving since that's what they've been doing for a hundred years. The professionals, by and large, don't take this kind of image any more.

Olly

Edited November 3, 2013 by ollypenrice

[xanthic]

Great images as usual Olly. Out of interest, what are professionals capturing now?

[Guest ollypenrice]

Great images as usual Olly. Out of interest, what are professionals capturing now?

 

They mostly take spectra in order to find out how an object is moving (exoplanet searches, expansion of the universe measurement, studies of dark metter etc) or to find out what it is made of. There is relatively little imaging as we think of it, sadly. I met a professional recently who was studying nearby galaxies in the UV because new space telescopes will be working in infra red wavenelengths. However,  for the distant galaxies the light that arrives here as infra red set out as UV before being redshifted. So the idea is to compare far and near (old and young) galaxies in the UV.

 

Olly