M81 in colour

[MattJenko]

I finally managed to get some RGB data for my M81 from the start of the month. It was curtailed with cloud, so limited Red. I think I need to reprocess to manage the core better looking at it now, but that is for another time. 

Skywatcher Evostar 80ED, Atik 414ex, HEQ5, PixInsight

L : 20 x 10 mins.

R : 4 x 10 mins

G,B : 6 x 10 mins.

The more eagle eyed will see the impressive multiple refractor mystery spikes on the brighter stars. I managed to shoot my RGB data at an almost perfect 45 degree offset to my Lum data

[MattJenko]

Redid with more gentle core and slight more saturated colours:

[gnomus]

That's impressive Matt.  Both are great, but for what it's worth I think No. 2 is a little better - a bit more detail in the core and more vivid colours.

I've seen this just as FLO have reduced prices on their Atik cameras.  Doh.... I've got an observatory to buy this month too.....

Are you having to do much noise reduction with your new camera?  What noise you have in those images is quite "naturalistic" and not intrusive.  Noise is one of the issues I am constantly battling against with the DSLR.  

[MattJenko]

Thanks, second one is abetter in my view as well. There is still noise, but it seems to be relatively easily dealt with at the linear stage in PixInsight. I use a mild noise reduction setting at various layers using the MultiscaleMedianTransform tool (3,2,1,0.5) and that is about that, what you see is what is left after that. There is no need for complex, masked noise reductions at later stages as with my DSLR images.

[gnomus]

I'm still learning PixInsight ... slowly..  I have seen a tutorial online where you use MMT at those settings and use different values for "Adaptive".  You presumably still use a mask when doing the Linear NR though?

[MattJenko]

I am guessing we saw the same video - Depends on the target. for star clusters, I don't bother, for this i did a simple Lum mask (stretched obviously though).