M81/M82 First Attempt

[ianaiken]

My first attempt at this pair, and my second Galaxy attempt.

Taken with the kit in my sig. 7 hours of data @ 60 x 7 min subs. Calibrated with Darks and Flats. Processed in Pixinsight (my first go at using that - thanks Harry!!!).

Full res can be downloaded at my website

Any feedback appreciated

[teh_feckerer]

Great image, superb detail!

[Zul]

Awesome! Great Job!

[ollypenrice]

Very crisp indeed with lovely detail in both galaxies.

Have you tried Background Neutralization in PI? The reds look a bit busy in the background sky to my eye and BN should nail that easily. You may need to raise the threshold from the default setting.

Olly

[Uplooker]

Excellent image Ian. I am trying to capture these two fuzzies myself. You have certainly given me something to strive towards. Well done.

Ian

[The Viper]

lovely image you should be proud of that, thanks for sharing

[Shibby]

Awesome detail! You've picked up Holmberg IX nicely, too, so looks like all that exposure time has done the trick!

Only thing, as already stated by Olly, there is some red noise showing as the background.

[harry page]

Hi

Yes the background does need the BN tool as there does not seem to be much blue there , also be careful with the inverted stars a star mask can help .

Lastley a little more control with Noise reduction , to much on the galaxys and not enough on the background:cool:

But a good start

Harry

[Chris]

Lovely image:)

[ianaiken]

Thanks everyone, I am overwhelmed at the response. I started to have doubts about the image maybe due to looking at it too long but these are now gone and I have some good feedback on how to improve the image. I appreciate it all. They say you spend more time processing the image than capturing the data, they are not wrong!

Olly - Yes I noticed the red in the background. I used my rejection high for dark, cropped followed by DBE, HT, HDR, ACDNR, SAT and CC. I think in that order going by the filename I gave it, saving all the way along. At what point would BN be done?

Harry - thanks to you for the videos. Without them I would not have been able to process this at all. I will look at using the BN, and also creating a star mask so I don't invert them, I see some of the larger stars are inverted.

Also, for the noise, I will give it another pass and play about a bit with the masking and preview. My master dark was a bit odd and the final image calibrated master light had a tremendous amount of noise in it so I may redo the dark calibration. I used 32 darks at ~+6C which is the same temp as the lights. Ideally I need to get to minus degrees, which I will be able too in the coming weeks.

Lewis - I had no idea about Holmberg IX :-) I see it now.

[Tinker1947]

Very nice image.

[cloudbuster]

I agree....a super start! well done!

[Darth Takahashi]

For a first attempt, its an excellent image...

[Quatermass]

I remember finding these two and what a thrill it was for the first time. Great image lots of detail there well done.

[ianaiken]

Thanks all. I'm going to try a bit more processing on this one from the beginning and also may reduce the subs and get rid of any poor ones. I'll post the result once I get to it.

[Moon monkey]

Thats lovley .... very well done

Cheers MM

[Coco]

My first attempt at this pair, and my second Galaxy attempt.

Taken with the kit in my sig. 7 hours of data @ 60 x 7 min subs. Calibrated with Darks and Flats. Processed in Pixinsight (my first go at using that - thanks Harry!!!).

Full res can be downloaded at my website

Any feedback appreciated

Excellent result, very gfine detail in the flux..

[Fenriz]

Great image, loads of detail in there. Well done.