M81/M82 and a bit of IFN...(?)

[Hallingskies]

I managed to grab 12 x 600s of luminance data for the M81/82 pair on the night of the 20^th, before the inevitable clouds rolled in. In the absence of the RGB and Ha data I was after, I thought I’d have a play to try and bring out the wisps of IFN that could just about be seen lurking on the calibrated monochrome stack (20 flats, no darks, hot pixel removal in Astroart instead).

To tease out the background integrated flux nebula (IFN), a copy of the processed luminance stack was histogram equalised in PaintShop, given a thumping great Gaussian blur, layered back over the original at 10% density and the bright galaxy areas then carefully erased to give this rendition. 

Yes it’s a complete fudge, but it does give a hint of the IFN that can be found in the region. Either that or my flats are really bad...

Edited February 22, 2020 by Hallingskies