M81 & M82 (HaLRGB)

[blinky]

This is the first image taken from my new dark sky site at Tummel Valley caravan park in deepest Perthshire in Scotland.  The site does have some lighting, some of it quite high intensity LED but none of it directly shines on my caravan though.

This was 15XL and 10X R, G & B as well as 9 Ha (Which Im not sure was worth doing) all subs were 5 mins long.  Taken with a ZWO ASI1600Mono and a WO ZS73 on an HEQ5 Pro.  All processing done in Pixinsight, apart from a wee bit of desaturation of the big galaxy as it got oversaturated when adding the Ha, which I did in Photoshop!

Comments & criticism greatly accepted ? 

 

 

[blinky]

Cant leave it alone!  Did another colour balance and then SCNR Noise Reduction, I think the galaxies are a little more erm… 'normal'

[blinky]

Maybe need to still do a little on the background as well. V3 coming later!

[Xplode]

Color balance is better now.
Background? I'm not sure there is any background, seems the black point is clipped...or maybe it's just too dark? You should at least make it lighter, a background value of 25-30 is normally good

[blinky]

wish I could figure out how to get the Ha region to be red in the galaxy

[wimvb]

1 minute ago, blinky said:

wish I could figure out how to get the Ha region to be red in the galaxy

Try the nbrgb script. You may need to experiment with the strength. The regions will allmost never be scarlet red as in deep sky Milkyway Ha clouds.

Nuce image, btw. But as @Xplode already noted, try to lighten the background a tad. For galaxies, I like to put the final value somewhere in the range 0.06 - 0.08, depending on any structures that may be present.

[tomato]

  Very nice, v2 is a better colour balance IMHO, and I agree that the black point is maybe clipped a little bit. Great to see you have NGC 3307 in the frame, it’s often overlooked due to it’s more flashier neighbours.

[blinky]

OK - How does the background look on this version?

 

[blinky]

Figured out how to change the orange to red!

[GiorgioF]

Lovely and detailed image. Full of color and pleasant to the eyes.

Think about the IFN.... It's full of surgery clouds.... I can see there is.

Just do a DBE with the sampling square in right place. I'm sure you know how to do.

[blinky]

I was not sure if it was IFN or light pollution!  I have been trying to get rid of it, hence why I had originally clipped the blacks - how can I tell if it is IFN? and how do I process it if it is?

[GiorgioF]

You can compare your shot with someone else image, for example. You just need to browse around.

IFN is very faint and not easy to catch but there is. My first suggestion, as what I always do, is to study well the subject I want shot also browsing around watching the work of people more skilled and experienced than me.

Once get the image stacked, compare with similar ones. Details, especially faint details, can be then recognized as signal and not light pollution.

 

When I was young I was experiencing b/w pictures retouch and cleaning. On that time we were using a thin brush and China ink. My boss was observing me while I was touching with black ink the small white spot of durst on a picture. Then he told me: good job. But please, next time do not cancel the botton of the uniform of this soldier....

Means: not always what we perceive as pollution is really pollution.....