M106, When Flats Don't Work

[lensman57]

Hi,

A capture of M106 ruined by flats that made the stacked image looked like it had Chicken Pox so I left them out. Just for a laugh I post the image.

A.G

[Dave_D]

Better than my attempt

[AstroAndy]

There is a way to make a flat off of the image (with Photosh.), 2 in fact (that I know of), let me know if you want instructions or a link. I once imgd. M31 w/ Canon 1100D piggybacked, and this genius forgot that the guide cam's lcd kept brightly blinking into the lens during the session, thus, I made my own flat, and got an img a lot better.

[james_screech]

Shame about the flats, there is a lot of detail in the galaxy.

James

[lensman57]

Thank you Dave,Andy and  James,

I am afraid that the artificial flat frame subtraction ( as donein PS ) is not going to do much about this one. The data is ruined and I have to take quite a bit of responsibilty for it.

The flats worked perfectly on the M57 image that I also posted , these were both taken during  the same session. I attach a jpeg of the stack with the STF parameters applied in PI, I think you'd get the  idea. I may reprocess it differently as I think there is still good data in the stack of 11X900s subs ( 2 were discarded ).

Many Thanks and Regards,

A.G

[russellhq]

Did you manage to make out the supernova in any of your images of M106?

http://darkskydiary.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/a-new-supernova-in-m106/

I found out about the supernova in the link above.

[lensman57]

Did you manage to make out the supernova in any of your images of M106?

http://darkskydiary.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/a-new-supernova-in-m106/

I found out about the supernova in the link above.

Hi Russell,

Thank you for pointing the SN out. I was not aware of it. I have attached a reprocess of the main body of the M106 ( 100% crop ) in the same orientation as the published image of wordpress, I think that resolution wise they are comparable.   I have applied a single pass of the HDR MultiScale transform in PI with the wavelet layers set to 3 and a mask for the galaxy.  You can examine the image and decide yourself. The subs were taken on the 19th of May between 0026 and 0229 am.

Regards,

A.G

PS: Considering that the wordpress image was taken using a 17" telescope I am beginning to feel quite proud of What I managed to get from  a back garden in manchester with a 4" F9 scope, shame about those lousy flats.