M81 & 82 Revisited

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Hi,

I've been sitting in the background a bit with astronomy and SGL for the last few months, mostly been doing some quiet visual on the planets while they are around.

Also, been putting in some time learning Star Tools, and finally I'm getting the results I'm wanting on M81 and 82 from just before Christmas. This is the first time I've done this object any justice, so I thought I'd post my results. 

About 20 x 360sec, ISO 800. EQ5 Deluxe, AG with PHD2, w/50mm finder  ASI120 as Guidecam. 130PDS and 1000d, unmodded (back then). Stacked DSS, Processed StarTools.

The background is really clumpy looking, which is a shame, I don't think I can resolve this though without the image turning out looking like a watercolour. I think it's just a combination of quite short (around 1h of 3 min subs) integration times and an old, noisy DSLR. I am planning to revisit these bois in December once the Milky Way has passed. Hopefully now I'm modded I can get some more Ha in the Cigar. I'm almost tempted to put in the horrible SW 2x Barlow and try getting a closer up shot on the Cigar, its a little bit easier to get the detail in that one than Bode's.

Hope you like it! If you have any criticisms/suggestions I'd love to hear them, I really want to improve! 

John

[spillage]

Looks good. Did you run the life module, Less is more might take out the background issues but have a play around. I would just mask out the galaxies first so they are not touched as these are looking good.

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Hi,

19 minutes ago, spillage said:

Looks good. Did you run the life module, Less is more might take out the background issues but have a play around. I would just mask out the galaxies first so they are not touched as these are looking good.

I have tried messing around with the life options, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much I can do to remove the background stuff. Do you think the background is a little bit too bright? So may people have different views as to how bright it should and shouldn't be!  

John

[spillage]

I think it looks fine and like the result, better to be slightly light than black clipped anyway. Do you dither as this may even things out, Sure I had dithering quite high in APT when I had my dslr.

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Yes, I do dither, I may not have set it quite high enough, though. I did have an issue last time where I accidentally set the dither size in PHD at the largest possible, and didn't realize. Result was 1-2 min long dithering!

I will try increasing it slightly. Otherwise, I guess my best chance is to get more data.

John