M101 LHaRGB/LRGB

[discardedastro]

Six hours of L, an hour of Ha, and about 2 hours each of RGB. Baader filters (7nm Ha) and ASI183MM-PRO on a 200PDS, EQ6-R tracking.

This was made up with a few nights of capture in March and a little bit of data I captured back in mid-2019 - the former providing much more quality data than the latter.

Processing was with PixInsight exclusively; calibrated with darks+flats, integrated with a mix of Linear Fit and Generalised ESD plus large structure pixel rejection, weights from SubframeSelector. DBE'd all masters, deconvolved all masters with a DynamicPSF-generated PSF, combined RGB, BackgroundNeutralisation, PhotometricColourCalibration, MLT denoised, Histogrammed, LRGBCombination, fair bit of RangeMask jiggery-pokery to denoise and desaturate the background without messing up the fainter nebulosity, very light pass of HDRMT, tiny bit of masked LocalHistogramNormalisation, and final bit of MLT sharpening. Denoised Ha and DBE'd separately and combined with NBRGBCombination script.

Overall quite happy with this - going to try going deeper on some of this, but it's been nice to get some lower-noise stacks to work on than my usual shorter runs.

LRGB only:

[Allinthehead]

Great image.

[MarkAR]

Great image of M101. I think I prefer the LRGB, just looks a little more subtle.

[geoflewis]

Wow that's a cracking M101; I like both versions. I think your blending of Ha is very good, not overdone as I see in many images, just enough to give those regions some pop without them becoming garish.