M51 RGB Work in progress

[john2y]

Hey guys,

as I shoot from the balcony and setting the SGP to shoot the whole night I was able to gather 30x120s for each channel of the M51 in Ursa Major even though it rises around 2AM. This is the first object that was shot completely while I was asleep. It took me 2 nights as I can't shoot anything for more than about two hours as I have really limited view. So far no luminence data and to my big surprise for just 3 hours of RGB it looks decent enough that I'm not ashamed to post it even though it was shot without any CLS filter in the red zone from the center of the city.  I'll be definitely adding luminence data and at least double the exposure times for the RGB too.  

Shot on Explore Scientific AP 102/714 ED APO Triplet with 0,8x reducer with ZWO ASI1600MM Pro with ZWO filters. 

Processed in Pixi and Photoshop

Jan

[wimvb]

Looks very good to me. You may not need to gather luminance. Just combine the r, g, and b masters into a synthetic luminance, and process as ordinary LRGB.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice!

[Craney]

Lovely picture,

I was wondering why you used the 0.8xFR  ?  Does this provide the correct image-arcsec-pixel-whatever-it-is-ratio for your scope ?

[john2y]

Thank you guys!

wimvb: I could but there's nothing much in the sky around that time so I'll probably end up with many more hours anyway so hopefully it'll produce clean image. 

Craney: Couple of reasons, it reduces my focal ratio from f7 to f5, gives me wider field of view (I shoot mainly nebulae in narrowband from the city) and I have really crappy mount Celestron CG5 Advanced GT I'm third owner and I like to call it oscillator  and shorter the focal length less sensitive to the oscillations. I'm gonna be buying Cem60 early next year.