M101 - A Belated LR(Ha)GB Offering

[PhotoGav]

I know that we are well beyond Galaxy Season and well into Cygnus Season, but I have only just found the time to process my data of M101 that I shot back in April and May.

Technical Details:

Celestron EdgeHD 800 with Reducer, QSI 683-WSG8 & Baader filters.

L = 31 x 1200s

RGB = 14 x 600s each

Ha = 12 x 1200s

Total = 21 hours 20 minutes

Here's the image:

All in all I am pretty happy with the way this image has come out. Lots of data has let me bring out quite a bit of detail in the galaxy. I am not sure of the colours, it just seems a little muted to me. Images of galaxies often explode with blues, but I have never managed to find them with my equipment and processing. Is this because they aren't really there or do I need to expose differently for the colour filters? Quality wise, I have worked very hard on steadying my mount and improving guiding. I also made extra sure that focus was spot on for all subs with this project. I think it has all paid off and this is definitely the best image I have produced so far with the Edge.

As ever, please let me know what you think and any suggestions or tips for improvement are definitely welcome!

 

Clear skies!

[baggywrinkle]

Lovely image...

[PatrickGilliland]

Hi Gav

Very nice and plenty of detail as you say.  Not sure how you process, don't see PI in your list of tools.  If using that a colour calibration might help early in the process then some saturation increases on selected channels, maybe one of your other tools could help.  You might find selective colour adjustments in PS could provide a solution, looks like red and yellow need a decrease and blue a lift if you are looking for blue.  Try it with a mack though you have pulled down some nice HA and no point loosing red in that as part of adjustment.

All else look good - focusing and guiding all spot on nice work.

Paddy

[Ruud]

A very attractive galaxy, warm and beautiful. I wouldn't mind living there.

[swag72]

I think that the detail in this looks good as does the Ha knots - Very nice indeed. The colour is a little off in my opinion and personally I'd like to see a little more blue. To get there I'd be looking at the colour select tool and also the colour balance.

[ollypenrice]

I think that's a very good M101. Maybe the colours are a little bit on the warm side. Have you used the colour sampler to measure the background sky? You might find that a small move left with the grey point slider in blue might give you some help. The Ha looks striking.

The only other thing I can think of is that the field stars could be smaller. My own way of doing it is to build a 'background sky and stars' layer processd just to get them right and ignoring the galaxy. You have to get the background identical to the original then you can let the small stars through from a layer.

Olly

[PhotoGav]

Thank you for your feedback all. I will go and have a tweak in Photoshop (Paddy - no I don't have PI) and see if I can blue it up a bit!

Olly - that's a good point about the star field. I did some star reduction during the processing, but that hasn't really dealt with the fatter stars.

 

[laudropb]

Very nice image.

[Rodd]

Great detail--but I agree about the colors--but that is a simple color calibration (or similar tool).  All the data is there.  And very little noise.

[PhotoGav]

Thank you laudropb and Rodd.

As for tweaking the colour, I have had a go, but not made any great difference. As far as I can tell the colour is balanced. The background colour levels are equal, which to me suggests that this is the correct colour for the data I gathered. Yet it does seem a bit on the 'warm' side. Are there any colour standardisation tricks in Photoshop that I could try?

[Fay]

Lots of lovely detail there!

Very nice

Fay

[Rodd]

2 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

Thank you laudropb and Rodd.

As for tweaking the colour, I have had a go, but not made any great difference. As far as I can tell the colour is balanced. The background colour levels are equal, which to me suggests that this is the correct colour for the data I gathered. Yet it does seem a bit on the 'warm' side. Are there any colour standardisation tricks in Photoshop that I could try?

Its definitely warm--yellowish.  I use Pixinsight so I can't help.  The color calibration tool/background neutralization tool  in PI will correct this very well however--As long as you have RGB data-it will balance it. 

[PhotoGav]

I had a braver go with Colour Balance and Blue Curves in Photoshop. I also couldn't resist a touch of sharpening. Sorry Olly, I couldn't face going back and redoing the star size, that piece of advice will have to be heeded for future projects!

The thing is, to my workflow this is now incorrectly colour balanced - the colour sampler points in the background areas all tell me that the blue channel is a couple of points higher than red and green. So, which do I believe - the colour sampler or the overall look? My ideal is to create an image that is a 'true and fair' representation of what is out there, in this case M101. However, I have now tweaked the colours to make them look better. Is the object out there a warm glowing colour, more like my original 'colour balanced' version, or is my data incorrect and the bluer colours are more accurate?

[Davey-T]

Nice M101 Gav, curiously I remember having the opposite problem, too blue and not enough red, thought it was lack of data but never got enough clear sky this year to gather more.

Dave

[PhotoGav]

33 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Nice M101 Gav, curiously I remember having the opposite problem, too blue and not enough red, thought it was lack of data but never got enough clear sky this year to gather more.

Dave

Hah! Perhaps if we share data it will come out the perfect colour!