Tips on processing M51?

[Anweniel]

Got arguably my best data to date Thursday night. Decided to go for the whirlpool as its been teasing me by stopping just out of reach from my garden until recently.

I have :13 x 10 mins lights @ISO 800

22 x 10 mins darks

51 x flats

Processed in CS6

Captured in APT

Scope: WO Megrez 90

Mount: CG5-GT

Camera: Unmodded 1000D

I've managed to tackle some of the more drastic LP gradient issues thanks to some video tutorials and had a bit of a play with the processing (a lot more subtle than my attempts with GIMP)

However, an initial play without the calibration frames appears to the better It seems the darks have done their job as some pixels have been edited in my under calibrated version to remove strange pixels manually.

Is this a case of more practice processing or does it highlight another issue, perhaps with the flats?

Any help/advice greatly appreciated

without flats/darks:

With flats and darks:

[Astro_Gaz]

i always use layer masking on DSO, don't know if that's the best way but im happy with some of the results i achieve

[cp255]

I just finally got a good image of M51 from a data set I took nearly a year ago. As I learn more about post processing I keep getting better results than I thought I could even from my oldest data sets. I think the trick with M51 is to bring out the glow around the object while keeping the background dark. I think the best solution fro this is to have lots of data to keep the noise down. I also used a 1px median filter when processing to keep the noise down. Here is my best result http://www.rawastrodata.com/pages/galaxies/m51.html

If you notice in the image I left a fair amount of noise in the background. If I try to remove it I lose the glow around the galaxy.

[Anweniel]

A splendid image! You have acquired a lot more data in the dusty areas in particular the spiral arms, I have come to the conclusion that aside from the processing and slight soft trailing the focus is also a little soft so inevitably the rest is going to be a struggle!

Many thanks for your input and congratulations on your own attempt Shall add more data when/if the skies clear!

[cp255]

Focus is important. I did that image just eyeballing the correct focus using live view. Now I use a bahtinov mask and get even better focus.

[Anweniel]

Yeah I have been using Bahtinov and live view but its not got it quite right, close but no cigar it seems. Yours certainly has yielded better results though