M74 - LRGB with lots of light pollution

[cfpendock]

M74 is a rather faint galaxy around 30 million ly distant.  It measures around 10' across, so a perfect size for my C11 at 2800mm focal length and Atik 4000 camera which gives around 20' field of view.

I managed to get 16 x 5 minute subs each of RGB to add to my previous 24 x 5minute subs of luminance.  I decided that this was enough for now due to banks of LED lights on nearby roadworks (which will continue until April), but I have managed nevertheless to squeeze out a bit of colour.

Any comments / criticisms welcomed.

Chris

 

 

[Hallingskies]

Your guiding must be pretty good at that focal length.  The outer areas of the galaxy look a bit fuzzy, wonder if you have over-cooked the noise reduction?  The centre is lovely and sharp with good colour.

[MartinB]

Excellent colour and some good detail especially in the core.  These galaxies are a big challenge with UL LP.  I agree that the outer regions look a little smoothed out.  A bit of noise is understandable!

[cfpendock]

16 hours ago, Hallingskies said:

Your guiding must be pretty good at that focal length.  The outer areas of the galaxy look a bit fuzzy, wonder if you have over-cooked the noise reduction?  

Thank you very much Hallingskies.  Yes, the tracking from my EM200 is pretty good - around 0.3 arcsec, but I take care under-balance slightly so that the mount is always pushing.  Yes, I think you are right -  the noise reduction is excessive, but because of the light pollution, the image was otherwise horribly blotchy.... But I did cheat on the core by using some selective sharpening which absolutely did not work on the outer areas....I shall try again when I have a moment.

It is exactly these kind of comments which I find extremely useful - I get blinded by looking too much at the same thing!  So once again, thanks.

Chris 

[cfpendock]

14 hours ago, MartinB said:

Excellent colour and some good detail especially in the core.  These galaxies are a big challenge with UL LP.  I agree that the outer regions look a little smoothed out.  A bit of noise is understandable!

Thank you very much, Martin.  Your comments always very encouraging!

Chris