StarTools

I imaged this remotely via itelescope at the Siding Springs Observatory.

Equipment:. Planewave 20', FLI-PL 09000 CCD

The exposures are:

13x180 Ha
22x 180 Oiii

Not bad for a 20' but the seeing was terrible and many of the frames were during dusk. The moon was almost full. I struggled with noise and will be taking more exposures soon.

I'm pretty much blind to this as I've been spending a lot (too much) time processing. I'd
love to get a more objective opinion than mine. Thanks for a critique.

Richard

https://flic.kr/p/2nCrDfo

Awesome!

I imagine it depends what you are looking for as well as your own style, of course. Including the amount of grain versus smoothing or denoise that you would employ.

I think it looks great at the first-shown scale. But after a zoom and especially double-zoom it might be a bit splotchy or perhaps uneven in the grain. Uncertain of the workflow you threw at it. I'd have to look up the specs and calculate the sampling size that was used for acquisition. Funny, neither the telescope nor the camera are in my personal knowledge base.

But that's nitpicking and pixel peeping, overall a spectacular target and photo!

Thanks Mike.

Though it was a 20' scope, most of the frames were taken either at dusk, very poor seeing etc. Also the Ha set has about half as much exposure as the Oiii - so there was a lot of noise to work around. As usual, I tend to stretch the data to its limits and beyond. So the murkiness as you zoom in is the result of aggressive denoising. I'm sure it wouldn't look as good processed with other software. Nevertheless, what a cool target!

Richard