This image is the result of a group project by a total of 7 different amateur astrophotographers, all with unique gear. The main goal of this image is to showcase the power of Lucky Imaging in astrophotography. This method basically translates planetary photography workflows over to deep sky astrophotography. Tens of thousands of very short images are taken and only the very sharpest of these are selected for further integration. Even with 1 second exposures (which are already pretty long for Lucky Imaging), we could already see a drastic difference in sharpness of the data. Please note, that deconvolution was already applied for both datasets in this comparison.
The main sharpening effect of Lucky Imaging can be seen in the center and along the central dust lane of NGC891, these being the brightest areas. One downside of using Lucky Imaging is that due to the very short exposure times, it delivers usable data mainly for brighter areas. Fainter parts of an object would need extreme amounts of individual exposures to neutralize the noise inherent in short exposures.
This target was processed by @Stefan2499 using Pixinsight and Photoshop. Much care was applied on keeping the data as real as possible, as it is easy to go overboard with sharpening techniques and introduce unwanted artifacts. For next year, we may focus on catching more data for the faintest dust features of this galaxy, that can be seen in this comparison image of the Schulman Telescope.
Img 2: Comparing BAT data (left) with the Schulman Telescope (right). Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
Galerie von Adam Block - AstroBinPlease check the link below the image if you are interested in joining the BAT. We are always interested in new members and do monthly group projects encompassing widefield targets, high resolution projects all the way to seasonal mega projects like Hubble's Variable Nebula, as can be seen in our previous Astrobin Post. Membership is free and comes with no obligations other than being friendly and enthusiastic about astrophotography!
In total, we collected over 60hrs worth of data from various locations, consisting from Lum, R, G and B and OSC. In addition, the data was merge with 68minutes of LI data for the sharpening in the galaxy core, as described above.
Thank you for contributing data:
@Elusin (R: 3.5hrs, G: 3.5hrs, B: 3.5hrs, L: 3.5hrs)
@zac (R: 2hrs, G: 2hrs, B: 2hrs, L: 7hrs)
@joelkuiper (R: 3hrs, G: 3hrs, B: 3hrs, L: 4hrs)
@reglogge (R: 1hr, G: 0.98hrs, B: 0.83hrs, L: 2.42hrs)
@weber (R: 3hrs, G: 3hrs, B: 3hrs)
@MrCrazyPhysicist (LI: 68mins + Lum data)
@SoReal (OSC: 8.5hrs)
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