M51 collaboration

[gorann]

Ole Alexander continues to encourage me to work on his excellent data, this time on M51 and I have again striven to bring out as much dust and detail as possible. I enclose a close up to show how much detail you can get in 3 hours with a large aperture Newtonean and a full frame DSLR in dark rural Norway.

Equipment: TS 12" Imaging Newtonean (f/4) on a 10 Micron GM2000 HPSII, Canon 6D (modded), 90x120" ISO1600. April 12th 2016.

All comments and suggestions most welcome!

[gorann]

PS. you may notice a few galaxies around the main one. In fact, there are over 2000 of them in this image, as Ole Alexander found using Pixinsight.....

[wimvb]

Wow, great image! Only 3 hrs of data?? But then again, 12" is quite some photon bucket.

 

Great collaboration

[gorann]

Thanks Wim!

[laudropb]

Very nice image.

[gorann]

Thanks laudropb!

[ultranova]

Looking very good indeed, Background is flat and nicely processed,

The only comment is M51 , the colour looks a bit to strong,

But that's is personal preference,

well done

Paul

[gorann]

Thanks Paul!

Yes, I was wondering how strong I should make it. You find a good range of colour strength on the net of this one. I guess I had a day for the strong. In any case, who knows what it would look like in real life, getting up close....

[wimvb]

44 minutes ago, gorann said:

Thanks Paul!

Yes, I was wondering how strong I should make it. You find a good range of colour strength on the net of this one. I guess I had a day for the strong. In any case, who knows what it would look like in real life, getting up close....

You probably wouldn't see the galaxy for the stars. I think it would look like our galaxy does for us, being as up close as can be.

I like the strong colours, whether they are realistic or not.

[Daniel-K]

the data looks good, the processing is a little on the harsh side. there is  a nasty halo around the bright star on the left and a few dust bunnies top right that could be sorted out with spot healing, the back ground sky has a nice flat feel to it but looks like the noise reduction was over done on it and the galaxy was not masked during the process. i think with some carefull processing this image can be very good. just take your time,

[gorann]

12 hours ago, Daniel-K said:

the data looks good, the processing is a little on the harsh side. there is  a nasty halo around the bright star on the left and a few dust bunnies top right that could be sorted out with spot healing, the back ground sky has a nice flat feel to it but looks like the noise reduction was over done on it and the galaxy was not masked during the process. i think with some carefull processing this image can be very good. just take your time,

Thanks for the suggestions! Here is a new version where I reduced the noise reduction affecting the galaxy and at the same time sharpened some more blurry pars of it, and tried to remove halo and dust bunnies (although I personally kind of liked the halo). Actually, on my screen and with my eyes I had a hard time seeing the dust bunnies unless I brought the light way up in curves.