M51 in good ol' mono

[Spikey]

I'm sufficiently cloud bored enough now to re-jig recent captures

This is M51 Lum data from SGL 7 18x300 seconds with ED80 & Atik16HR.

DSS'd at x2 drizzle for a better scale and a bit of post processing in PS7. I did a colour version which didn't turn out so well, it was tricky to get the bin 2x2 to rotate and match with the Lum when expanded to the correct size after drizzling.

[Gina]

Nice detailed image I know what you mean about cloud bored!!

[peter shah]

A super shot with lots of detail

[Quatermass]

Lots of lovely detail in there I like mono images as well. Cloud bored, yes know what that feels like for sure.

[Spikey]

Ignore the misalignment and the red blobs,all for a dash of colour

[ianaiken]

That's some nice detail in the mono.

[morimarty]

Thats great resolution out of the ed80 Spikey, did you image this at its native 600fl or did you use a reducer/flattener.

[Spikey]

It's with the reducer/flattener. I've been experimenting with different processing packages so I'll be doing a comparison between DSS, Maxim, Astroart and Nebulosity. Same data, similar workflow but different software. Hope to do some performance comparisons as well. It's WIP at the moment as I learn the various differences in the packages.

[morimarty]

I'm in a similar position as yourself spikey, I am trying out astroart5 and PI at the moment. So i'll look forward to your findings with the various software packages and of course your final image.

[Spikey]

If you take a look at this thread Martyn http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-image-processing-help-techniques/186389-help-maxim.html you can see my first attempt with Maxim and also first go with Maxim & RGB. I must say, so far I'm impressed with Maxim.

[starnut]

Great shot well done

[ollypenrice]

Stonk me, that L data is right in there!

I find AA5 is brilliant for working within a set of subs, so it handles each filter on its own very well. It is very poor at aligning three colour channels, though. This is important for star colour so I co-register each colour (and the Lum) in Registar, the king of alignment programmes. You can do it manually in AA5 but life (at my age!!) is too short.

Olly