Leo Triplet Mosaic

[Taman]

This beautiful trio of galaxies is just outside the field of view of my SCT, so I decided to try a 2 part mosaic. This was taken in March and April last year.

I have processed it several times and this is the best version so far.

Stacked and stretched in Siril, mosaic joined together in Photoshop and star mask subtracted using Starnet++.

45 x 240s lights, 24 darks, 50 flats, 25 bias.

Total exposure time: 3 hours.

[Adam1234]

Looks very nice

[Taman]

1 minute ago, Adam1234 said:

Looks very nice

Thanks Adam!

[ollypenrice]

That's really well resolved, especially the beautiful M66. You'd find a vast improvement in smoothness if you had more data.

Olly

[Taman]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

That's really well resolved, especially the beautiful M66. You'd find a vast improvement in smoothness if you had more data.

Olly

Thanks Olly! 

I may have another go at this later in the year, if the clouds let me!

Edited February 4, 2020 by Taman

[astro mick]

Wow that is good.

Mick.

[MartinFransson]

That´s looking good so far! I like how you didn´t go overboard with noise reduction despite there being some noise. I prefer this more natural looking edit rather than the "plastic fantastic" look that can result from over smoothing the noise

[Taman]

19 minutes ago, MartinFransson said:

That´s looking good so far! I like how you didn´t go overboard with noise reduction despite there being some noise. I prefer this more natural looking edit rather than the "plastic fantastic" look that can result from over smoothing the noise

Thanks Martin.

No, I did not use any noise reduction. I try to keep my images as natural looking as possible, although I may have slightly overdone the saturation, increasing the colour noise. It's hard to know when to stop! 🙂

[MartinFransson]

30 minutes ago, Taman said:

It's hard to know when to stop! 🙂

Wait, what?! It´s possible to stop? 😮🤣