M81/M82 - 06/03/2006

[russ]

Have no idea why i even bothered last night. Awful conditions. Sky was a murky yuk. Left the camera taking 34 x 1 min images. But the clouds rolled in part way through, so ended with a fair bit less.

Originally setup on M95/96 but couldn't see them visually. Skyscan put them on the camera chip but they were barely visible. So gave up.

Decided on M81/82 but as i lifted the Skyscan controller, the cable popped out. Had to redo the alignment process again. Wasted precious minutes flaffing around.

So ended up with 18 x 1 min images. 7 of those were severly effected by the sky.

Thought I would post the original stacked image. Then various images at different stages of processing. Just to show how little appears in the original. But also how bad the image can look if pushed too far.

Original

mild processing

getting noisy

ooops too far

Regards

Russ

[OXO]

M81 has came out really well Russ :shock:

My unprossed images like your top one would be bright orange Russ i guess your using a LP filter too?

[MartinB]

Great picture Russ. I love the detail in the core of M82 and seeing the 2 galaxies together. How do you get rid of the background colouration like that?

Martin

[Rob]

Good stuff!

[CELESCOPE]

Nice Russ, they always look good together, wish i could get then like that ,

anyway lovely stuff mate ,

Rog

[russ]

Taking care of the background sky is not too hard, just us levels in Photoshop, in particular, the black point tool.

James, no filter used. If I had been imaging from the old house the image would have been Tango! Fortunately looking from the Northwest to the Southeast horizon is just looking over open countryside. Only a few houses and a church in the way. The Eastern horizon is a complete no go area.....Looking straight into Southampton, Eastleigh and Fawley Oil Refinery.

Regards

Russ