The dark lanes of M13 enhanced

A place to share images that you have taken with SharpCap.
Forum rules
Please upload large images to photo sharing sites (flickr, etc) rather than trying to upload them as forum attachments.

Please share the equipment used and if possible camera settings to help others.
Post Reply
User avatar
Menno555
Posts: 1053
Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2020 2:19 pm
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

The dark lanes of M13 enhanced

#1

Post by Menno555 »

By now it's probably known that I experiment a lot. Not only with object choices but also with equipment and processing. So doing weird things like processing a M13 capture (a mix of 30sec and 600sec shots) with StarNet v2 and see what happens.

I was expecting a kind of washed out, faint "blob" since all the stars were removed (StarNet v2 really does a great job) ... but much to my surprise it was more than that: the "propeller" became visible right away and some other structures too.
I processed the starless M13 in Photoshop and that gave even better results but it still was a kind of blob. By adding the stars back into it but at high transparency level, it became way more obvious :)

In the past they thought those dark lanes were dus lanes but now we know those dark lanes are randomly formed by the lack of bright(er) stars in those regions. So it only looks like this from our perspective on Earth.
Some lanes (like the propeller) are very obvious, others aren't. And since it's all happening in a small spot, it's actually a kind of cosmic Rorschach-test.
A dark lane that I see for example, will not be seen by someone else. So it's kind of subjective.

Nevertheless I am happy with this result. Especially since I've not seen it shown this way before (besides sketches). At least, not that I could find.
Here below the result with below it a version where I indicated the lanes I could see.

Menno

The dark lanes of M13
The dark lanes of M13
M13-bsm.jpg (239.77 KiB) Viewed 483 times
M13-csm.jpg
M13-csm.jpg (240.53 KiB) Viewed 483 times
timh
Posts: 515
Joined: Mon Aug 26, 2019 5:50 pm

Re: The dark lanes of M13 enhanced

#2

Post by timh »

Hi Menno,

Well I have to hand it to you for originality - a starless starcluster! :-) I see what you mean though. It brings out the bones of the larger scale structure.

In a way it is image simplification. I wondered if another approach might be to use noise removal tools and apply them to selectively smooth out the high frequency wavelets and just leave the low frequencies behind so just the 'bones' are left. I had a quick go with MLT a tool in PI to smooth away the the small stuff from M13 and it sort of worked.

Tim
User avatar
Menno555
Posts: 1053
Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2020 2:19 pm
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: The dark lanes of M13 enhanced

#3

Post by Menno555 »

Thanks Tim!
I did try the noise removal approach, both in high and low freq, but that was of no use. The result of StarNet v2 gave a too "fluid" result.

Menno
Post Reply