M101 lrgb in the Yvesmobile.

[ollypenrice]

Another galaxy from the 14 inch/Mesu 200. This had 7.5 hours of luminance (rather a trifling amount but a glich cost me 2 hours while dozing! Don't tell Yves...) Plus 8.5 hours of colour, so 16 hours, all in 15 minute subs.

It is tempting, when processing M101, to exaggerate. You have ultra strong signal in the core and can use an assortment of sharpening regimes which will give a hard edge to the detail therein. However, this cannot be matched by a similar sharpening in the arms and the image looks unbalanced. You can also lift up the core reds but so far as I can tell the core actually isn't very red and this is as far as I decided to go. I know a harder look is possible but that isn't for me.

I'm a softie.

An Ha layer will start to shape up tonight but LRGB for now.

Olly

Closer...

Full image at full size is here;

Galaxies - ollypenrice's Photos

[Quatermass]

Wow that is stunning Olley, my wife has said she would like to come and have a week end at your place next year I said'- my my that is a most excellent idea! hopefully by then my imaging skills would have improved for me to get near this kind of talent.

[Fenriz]

Very nice indeed Olly, great job.

[nmoushon]

Thats an amazing picture! Would love to be able to get something half as good as this.

[Spikey]

Waiting for the Ha with interest Olly. Hoping to pick up some tips on how to add it into M101.

[ollypenrice]

Waiting for the Ha with interest Olly. Hoping to pick up some tips on how to add it into M101.

Well, generally I just ask what to do on SGL!!

Olly

[Spikey]

I wanted to see how you did it. I would normally go 50/50 layer blend with red and then an additional Ha mask on top. Never looks subtle enough.

[peter shah]

Another top shot there olly.......looking forward to it with some ha

[ollypenrice]

I wanted to see how you did it. I would normally go 50/50 layer blend with red and then an additional Ha mask on top. Never looks subtle enough.

OK, well that sounds more sophisticated than my method (which may be ready for an update.) I apply Ha to red in Blend Mode Lighten, but then I look at what effect it is having. (Most of my methods do require 'looking' - in the sense that they are not 'systems.') With galaxies, for which I always have a lot of LRGB data in the can before getting into Ha, I often find that the Ha is invisible. In this case I just lift it in curves till it shows above the red and keep going till I think it will be productive. However, there are likely to be negative effects as well, notably in areas of low signal. At this point the erasor is rather useful! I'm not at all scientific or mathematical in my approach. However, I'm open to ideas. This is a good example of the way I potter away at it. The red jets were not visile without a hefty stretch once applied over red channel;

Olly

[ollypenrice]

Yikes, an old thread! 2012. The final version of this one looked like this.

I still add Ha to red in blend mode lighten. I do miss the 14 inch scope, as well. Yves now runs a long FL scope in our robotic shed but Tom O'DOnoghue and I bought the mount which took this. (Mesu 200. Still going like a train.)

Olly

[gorann]

Stunning image as always! What kind of scope is "the 14" "? Good to know what to start saving for...

[ollypenrice]

4 minutes ago, gorann said:

Stunning image as always! What kind of scope is "the 14" "? Good to know what to start saving for...

It was a corrected Dall Kirkham. Because of customer service issues I'd perfer to leave it at that.

Olly

[toxic]

lovely clean image and very fine detail great stuff Olly.

[aparker]

Stunning image.  So much star formation going on in that galaxy.  Imagine what the star clusters would look like from a planet within one of the bright spiral arms....

[matt-c]

I got extremely excited when I saw quartermass commenting I thought he'd came back...... should have checked the date 

Excellent image,  I had no idea Ha was as useful in galaxy imaging. 

Good to know for when I move somewhere narrowband isn't a must. 

[ollypenrice]

4 hours ago, matt-c said:

I got extremely excited when I saw quartermass commenting I thought he'd came back...... should have checked the date 

Excellent image,  I had no idea Ha was as useful in galaxy imaging. 

Good to know for when I move somewhere narrowband isn't a must. 

It's often useful in spirals and irregulars where there is plenty of star formation. You can also catch exctiting jets in some of them. (M106 is a good one.)

Olly

[matt-c]

Just out of curiosity do you have the Ha data still? I've never seen a galaxy in just Ha (I imagine it doesn't resemble a galaxy?) but would love to see it. 

Purely for science.