Widefield Markarian's Chain plus M87, M89 and M90

[IanL]

Okay here is my DSLR attempt at Markarian's Chain plus a few extras:

Imager: Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED DS-Pro / Sky-Watcher 0.85x Reducer / Canon EOS 500D (unmodded) / Hutech IDAS LPS P2 2" / APT

Guider: Orion ST80 / QHYCCD QHY 5 / PHD Guiding

Mount: Sky-Watcher NEQ6 / EQMOD / Stellarium / Stellariumscope / Astrotortilla

Software: Processed entirely in PixInsight

Two pane mosaic consisting of a total of 81 x 600 seconds at ISO400 taken on 1st, 2nd, 6th, 7th, 20th April and 3rd, 4th May 2013. 109 Darks (using PI dark scaling), 330 Bias, ~25 Flats per session.

The main challenge was getting down the DSLR background noise without creating the dreaded chrominance clumps. PI's new TGV denoise tool was a massive help here. Matching the two panes was also a challenge as the background noise is noticeably different between the two (blaming my 2nd iteration of light box for this, not enough illumination in the red channel leading to more noise, which was fixed in a 3rd iteration before most of the subs for the right hand pane were taken.)

Ended up with about 123 process icons in PI, not including dark / bias library maintenance. Probably threw away about another 50 or 60 icons on various trials and tests.

Bigger version here: http://www.astrobin.com/full/55507/?mod=none (still downsampled 4 times from the final version though!)

[iksose7]

Excellent Ian

[davew]

That looks and sounds a labour of love. If I thought I could get anywhere near that I'd buy a Canon myself.

Simply wonderful,

Dave.

[MikeP]

I really like that image Ian - thanks for sharing it with us.

Mike