NGC 772 - First light from Oukaimeden Morocco | Astrobiscuit | Page 1

green coyote Dec 6, 2024, 10:34 AM

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This is the first image i got from my rigs after moving them to AtlasSkies, on the Atlas mountains in morocco. It's the culmination of a year of work, planning, preparation, and over a month of trips trying to make everything work as intended (and unfortunately it still doesnt, to a degree - my other rig has some troubles with guiding).
The location is amazing and the data is beautiful, although the seeing hasn't yet been as great as it can be - last year was much better during the winter months, but i guess that's the new gear curse for you.
I am very pleased with the data and strangely enough, i see much less artifacts around bright stars, one of the curses i had to fight imaging with this scope in the past - i hope that's gone for good.
The location is certainly much better than spain (2800m above sea level) but it's definitely a place that needs high end equipment and a very good skillset to get the best out of it. The place is very windy and it can affect guiding heavily sometimes, and collimation needs to be absolutely perfect otherwise you immediately lose the benefits of the better seeing.

Equipment
Celestron C11
Trident GTR
Artemis M PRO

60h luminance, 50h color

vocal nymph Dec 6, 2024, 10:35 AM

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absolutely insane

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type of stuff you see on galaxy surveys 👏👏

gaunt talon Dec 6, 2024, 10:41 AM

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wtaf

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that is insane

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maybe background a touch purple

green coyote Dec 6, 2024, 11:12 AM

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gaunt talon maybe background a touch purple

thanks for the feedback - you are right

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beter now?

gaunt talon Dec 6, 2024, 11:13 AM

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green coyote beter now?

incredible

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submit it to IOTD and APOD yeah?

green coyote Dec 6, 2024, 11:13 AM

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yeah i will post on astrobin

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the nasa one is a bit of a clownshow at this point but maybe

green coyote Dec 6, 2024, 11:31 AM

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previous color adjustment somehow affected the stars and structures in the galaxy, here a fixed version

gaunt talon Dec 6, 2024, 11:48 AM

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green coyote the nasa one is a bit of a clownshow at this point but maybe

agreed, still nice to say you got an APOD though,

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but theyve got to replace the judges cuz i dont know what is going on these days

ruby bough Dec 6, 2024, 1:09 PM

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This is probably the best image of ngc772 I’ve ever seen! Congratulations dude! The hard work paid off

toxic oxide Dec 6, 2024, 1:34 PM

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Absolutely nuts as always

knotty tusk Dec 6, 2024, 1:50 PM

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Absolutely amazing, but one question that star towards the bottom left, it has some spikes that other stars don’t have, or at least not as pronounced as that one star, is there faint gas I’m just not seeing on my phone that’s making it or is it just me, either way this image is wow I don’t have words it’s so beautiful and detailed

green coyote Dec 6, 2024, 2:10 PM

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no it's there

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i think these kind of slightly irregular spikes can be present if there are even very small aberrations due to tilt/backfocus especially in the corners

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even tho the field looks pretty flat in the analysis i did when i set up everything, even small differences can cause these irregular diffraction partterns

knotty tusk Dec 6, 2024, 2:14 PM

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Ahh okay, I just saw that and wondered about it, still doesn’t take away from anything about the image it’s still vary vary amazing

sharp coral Dec 6, 2024, 2:23 PM

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WOW this is incredible Very pretty image I saw it and I was speechless from how good this is

green coyote Dec 6, 2024, 2:30 PM

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interesting fact about this image is that although the galaxy takes a big part of the FOV in the image, it's actually very far away (more than three times farther away than M63, for comparison)

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this thing is an absolute unit of a galaxy

inner herald Dec 6, 2024, 4:38 PM

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mind blowing

timber ingot Dec 6, 2024, 5:07 PM

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This is epic indeed 🙏🙏

vivid ridge Dec 6, 2024, 7:38 PM

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definitely upload that revised version to IOTD

crude iron Dec 6, 2024, 7:44 PM

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Insane image here, astounding!!

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What's this little thing over here? It almost looks like a star cluster, but given the scale we're at, it might be a galaxy cluster or some kind of gravitational lensing phenomenon?

toxic oxide Dec 6, 2024, 7:50 PM

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From the shape it appears to be a single galaxy

crude iron Dec 6, 2024, 8:08 PM

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Perhaps, but the way it has like five or seven bright cores inside it intrigues me

toxic oxide Dec 6, 2024, 8:19 PM

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Could be BlurX exaggerating emission regions

crude iron Dec 6, 2024, 8:29 PM

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that could be too, yeah

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we need JWST and/or Hubble to get a nice deep shot of it, let's see what's really going on

little bone Dec 6, 2024, 9:20 PM

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green coyote This is the first image i got from my rigs after moving them to AtlasSkies, on t...

What is the best seeing you can get and what is that seeing at

ivory gorge Dec 6, 2024, 11:54 PM

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crude iron we need JWST and/or Hubble to get a nice deep shot of it, let's see what's reall...

Survey data will show

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Lemme do a search

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@crude iron its simply a bg galaxy with bright star clusters

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SDSS shows a good view of it

little bone Dec 7, 2024, 7:13 AM

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crude iron What's this little thing over here? It almost looks like a star cluster, but giv...

Probably a dwarf galaxy

little bone Dec 7, 2024, 7:20 AM

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little bone What is the best seeing you can get and what is that seeing at

Nevermind i figured it out its 2 arcsecond roughly

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For 2800m above sea level thats kinda bad could be your tracking

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Either way you have 2 arcsecond details

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And the way i know is simple i crossed referenced the image with hubble and i compressed the hubble image until the details look somewhat alike then figure out the X factor and the multiply that by 0.07 which is the resolution of hubble

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Which in this case was an image res of 91x89 divided by thr original image res which was 2858x2841 and we get 31.4 then we multiply that by 0.07 and we get 2.19 arcseconds

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It gives a rough idea on what different atmospheric seeing looks like

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Oh and also i forgot to mention i first aligned the fovs together

green coyote Dec 7, 2024, 9:17 AM

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thats pretty cool

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yes, the stack had a fwhm of 2.17"

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the average reported by the subframe selector though was around 1.8

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my tracking is pretty decent (sub 0.4 most of the time, sub 0.3 very often) but the location is very windy and the seeing hasnt been great since i arrived there

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they have a seeing monitor and this year performance hasnt been great yet, althpugh still better than spain

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plus the sky is darker and it allows to image very low (below 25 deg you still get pretty decent seeing)

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but very interesting what you did neveretheless

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which hubble image did you use? i would like to reproduce your process

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this is also something i need to figure out that i notice quite frequently, average fwhm of the individual frames is very often quite a bit better than the final fwhm of the stack, i am not sure why that is the case

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the average FWHM measured by subframe selector of this data was around 1.85"

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this was yesterdays seeing, not that great

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i am waiting for the good seeing that i saw last year, it did several noghts below 0.5" and most of the winter below 1"

next jewel Dec 7, 2024, 1:51 PM

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Amazing image

faint fiber Dec 7, 2024, 6:45 PM

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Dude did you steal Hubble and fly it halfway there? The resolution is amazing!

little bone Dec 7, 2024, 7:08 PM

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green coyote which hubble image did you use? i would like to reproduce your process

Uh ngc 772

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https://esahubble.org/images/potw1945a/

www.esahubble.org

A Rival to the Milky Way

little bone Dec 7, 2024, 7:15 PM

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little bone Which in this case was an image res of 91x89 divided by thr original image res w...

Oh oops i made a mistake in my explanation you need to divide 2858x2841 by 91x89

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I mean you could do it the other way but youd have to multiply by 1000 to get the same answer and the answer will be off by 0.4

green coyote Dec 7, 2024, 8:12 PM

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probably would be easier to do with this one from the gemini obs

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pretty happy when i compare mine to this one tbh, this was taken with a 8m telescope on top of the hawaian mountain

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the details in the small galaxies are similar, if we consider the obvious diffence in image scale

little bone Dec 7, 2024, 9:55 PM

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green coyote the details in the small galaxies are similar, if we consider the obvious diffen...

You can but you need a telescope with a set resolution that 8m telescope is limited by the atmosphere just like any other telescope

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The resolution of that image is not diffraction limited

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And you need to know the atmospheric seeing of that image at that exact time for the calculation to work

green coyote Dec 7, 2024, 9:56 PM

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Ah

little bone Dec 7, 2024, 9:56 PM

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little bone And you need to know the atmospheric seeing of that image at that exact time for...

Thats why i use hubble because the images of hubble will always be 0.07 arcsecond every single time

green coyote Dec 7, 2024, 9:56 PM

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Yes makes sense

gaunt talon Dec 7, 2024, 10:43 PM

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little bone The resolution of that image is not diffraction limited

doesnt gemini use adaptive optics?

ivory gorge Dec 7, 2024, 11:20 PM

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gaunt talon doesnt gemini use adaptive optics?

yes

gaunt talon Dec 7, 2024, 11:36 PM

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so wouldn't diffraction limit still be a limiting factor? (as well as atmosphere a bit)

toxic oxide Dec 7, 2024, 11:58 PM

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AOs aren't perfect so I'd image it's not constant

little bone Dec 8, 2024, 12:20 AM

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gaunt talon doesnt gemini use adaptive optics?

Yeah but it still doesn't make it diffraction limited nothing as of now beats the vacuum of space

gaunt talon Dec 8, 2024, 12:37 AM

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little bone Yeah but it still doesn't make it diffraction limited nothing as of now beats th...

both limits contribute negatively to the end resolution. if atmosphere was the only limit, why get a bigger aperture scope with longer FL for planetary? if resolution was the only limit, why have space-based telescopes? they both have an effect (but for professional and larger commercial scopes, atmosphere is definitely the worse one)

frosty meadow Dec 8, 2024, 2:16 AM

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green coyote previous color adjustment somehow affected the stars and structures in the galax...

Awesome!!!

little bone Dec 8, 2024, 3:35 AM

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gaunt talon both limits contribute negatively to the end resolution. if atmosphere was the o...

The only reason we have space base telescope is to remove the atmosphere yk the clouds the transparency and the effects of the sun

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So atmosphere is the only limit

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And bigger aperture telescope has more light gathering thats the only benefit for ground base telescope

#NGC 772 - First light from Oukaimeden Morocco