M101 Pinwheel Galaxy

[Neil I]

I wasn't really sure if I wanted to post this image as this has really been a challenge to process, and after numerous attemps I'm still not entirely happy with the result, but here it is anyway. 5hrs of luminance, 2hrs of ha and 1hr per channel of RGB. This is probably the most data I've captured for an image so far and the luminance has really started to show some great detail. The colour on the other hand has been pretty poor. I'm not sure if this was down to the sky conditions (quite a lot of LP) or my processing but I just can't seem to get the balance right.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Neil

[RikM]

I like that a lot. The little sparkly bits of Ha really add to it without being too 'in your face'. Well done

[Mark72]

Nice image Neil and a lot of color there

Mark

[Chris]

Thats fantastic Neil, lovely detail:)

[Gina]

Beautiful

[Quatermass]

Brilliant M101 lovely details and colours top knotch.

[Catanonia]

Excellent work on a very difficult target. Try boosting the vibrance and saturation and see if that brings out more colour.

I just tried it with the vibrance tool in CS5 and it gave nice results

[Shibby]

Wow, that's a stunner - very impressive detail and the colour balance looks good to me.

[Neil I]

Thank you all for the comments

I'm going to try and get more RGB data to balance out the Lum, but will also try tweaking the vibrance to see if it helps (thanks Cat).

Neil

[Fay]

Well that is very nice Neil.

Fay

[KeithFarmer]

You CCD lot make me want to cry. lol. Thats a cracking image. My own shots of M101 are largely the same shape but very little else.

[AndyUK]

M101's not an easy object to capture well (it's fainter than many think), but I'd be VERY happy indeed with this result . As you say, the luminance has captured a lot of detail... Can I ask how long your exposures were?

[nytecam]

M101's not an easy object to capture well (it's fainter than many think), but I'd be VERY happy indeed with this result . As you say, the luminance has captured a lot of detail... Can I ask how long your exposures were?

Poster says "5hrs of luminance, 2hrs of ha and 1hr per channel of RGB":D

[carastro]

An excellent result, I'd be well pleased with that.

Carole

[Neil I]

Can I ask how long your exposures were?

LRGB exposures were 300 secs and Ha were 600 secs.

Thanks again to all for the great comments.

[Spikey]

Thats a nice image on a tricky target Neil, well done.

[AndyUK]

Thanks Neal - I'm having difficulties sorting out exposure length when taking LRGB at the moment!

[Neil I]

Thanks Neal - I'm having difficulties sorting out exposure length when taking LRGB at the moment!

I'm still experimenting myself. 300secs seemed to work OK on M101 with my scope/camera without saturating too many stars, but other targets might be a different story. Just wish we had more clear nights to experiment

[MidnightSun]

Great image...well done.