M51 A complex approach to imaging!!!

[Darth Takahashi]

Not the best M51 but its OK, I think?

I meant to capture this object much earlier on this year, when it was higher in the sky and almost directly over head at the zenith. however, the weather and business commitment stop all that nonsense!!!

This is a new approach to M51 for me. I have combined the images from my trusty TOA130F with the SuperNewt (300mm, F4) newton using a Baader corrector. The newt has brought some additional image resolution but at the moment the price paid for it is too high. The stars from the newton aren't to my liking being a refractor aficionado. Initially, I had pinched the optics and misaligned the mirrors - too much trust in lasers! Those issues have now been resolved; however, the stars are a lot better but just not as good as a refractor.

The image data was captured as follows;

LRGB = 600s, 200s, 200s, 200s; Approx. 5 hours worth of data

L = 600s x 15 from the Newton (additional resolution)

The newton also brings me other challenges, since I'm guiding it in "Dual Chip Mode" with the ST10 on-board guide chip. This is too small and in a star poor area such as M51 means finding a good enough guide star is problematic. With the TOA130F I have the luxury of guiding with a BabyQ and ATIK 16IC which makes things a lot easier.

Processing is done with a mixture of Pixinsight and Photoshop and can definitely be improved, this is a quick pass at the new data.

[Gina]

WOW! That's a real beauty - well done

[Ewan]

Very nice shot Neil loving those colours

[SJJ]

That's a great image, well done. Some really nice detail in there.

[SlipperySquid]

Coming along really nicely Neil But the colours are way out? There's a massive purple/magenta cast, though the stars colours are starting to come through! Have you used a false flat? I just downloaded the JPEG Neil and if I remove the magenta using the selective colour tool in PS it leaves a lot of artifacts on the screen? If you did use a false flat layer it could have clipped the black point slightly? (I'm only guessing mate?)

I think this is how "Bodes" started out and we know what a beauty that was when you finished

Cheers matey,

Matt.

[JacobvonChorus]

Very nice. Detail is very present. I agree with Matt, there is a strong magenta cast. With some work though, that should be removable to produce what is shaping up to be a stunning image. I took an image a year ago, it started out with some strong magenta casts (though they were more uniform). After some colour balancing, I managed to produce what is one of my best images.

Jacob

[farunj]

Wow!! It's simply stunning!! Beautiful!!

[ollypenrice]

I agree with Matt.

Blue and green are black clipped but not red. To redo that you'd need the original files but just from the JPEG you can balance them more evenly. I had a play but wouldn't post without permission - and even if I had it I can't see how to post a small JPEG on the new forum! IT numbskull that I am.

Olly

[Darth Takahashi]

Sorry, only just managed to check this with my MAC and its horrible... I will reprocess it shortly using a proper computer. This is what you get when you pinch a little bit of the company's time on a rubbish DELL computer, never mind, lesson learn't.

Matt, report " Neil is very trying but need to pay more attention to his work" can't disagree on this result!!!!

[Darth Takahashi]

Well here it is a better - reprocessed version of the original data.

Looking back at it all last night I also discovered a couple of issues with the FLATS that were made, especially for the RGB. The RED and BLUE flats seem OK but the GREEN flats have gone completely wrong for some reason, this has cost me a lot of extra work to correct manually in PI. you can't beat having good flats, they really do help to smooth your image processing path.

With this image I have also added a separate layer for the stars since these can loose most of their colour in LRGB images.

Well I hope that you all agree that this is an improved version? It couldn't get any worse! Still this is one of the fun parts of imaging = image processing and processing and processing... There is always a little more detail to be pulled out.

Interestingly, I noticed last night that the cooler was struggling to reach its set-point of -20 Deg.C. The outside temperature was +24 Deg.C even at 23:00 I think I need some water cooling next time!!!

[Darth Takahashi]

I agree with Matt.

Blue and green are black clipped but not red. To redo that you'd need the original files but just from the JPEG you can balance them more evenly. I had a play but wouldn't post without permission - and even if I had it I can't see how to post a small JPEG on the new forum! IT numbskull that I am.

Olly

I also had trouble posting a new image; it appears that you can only do it by linking it from another site such as "PhotoBucket" using the <img></img> tags. I'm going to be setting up a secure FTP-server tonight so that I can share large files including the TIFF etc... So you might want to wait for that. Then you can have a crack at the RAW data. Its always interesting to see what other people can do with the image processing side of things. so you have my permission to post your results.

Regards

Neil

[JacobvonChorus]

Perfect, that's what I hoped you would do! The image is amazing.

Jacob