Head first into LRGB with M81 and M82

[geeklee]

I was recently lucky to be in the right place, right time to acquire a second hand Atik 460EX.  With some additional second hand filters that also cropped up I thought I was set for next season.  Then along came an unprecedented number of clear nights!  Up in NE Scotland, night is currently happening after 11 and ending just after 2 so over the course of a recent 4 nights I captured around 11 hours of subs on these two galaxies.  Some of this was in astro twilight as I tried to optimise my time Vs manually changing a filter and refocusing etc.  It was split up as follows:

L - 56 x 300s
R, G, B - 18 x 300s (each)
Ha - 12 x 600s

Equipment - SW Evostar 80ED, Atik 460EX, Baader LRGB filters.  Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in PixInsight.

I captured the Ha in the hope it could add something to the image but in the end I only used a fraction for the slight jets I caught in M82 and some Ha regions in the spiral arms of M81. 

I found this tricky to process compared to an OSC image - primarily due to the L + RGB blending and the histogram stretch pre blend - getting that balance right to be able to more easily process further.  I don't think I've got it perfectly at all, but this seems a good balance to bring out a tiny tiny bit of IFN by lightening the background up Vs some additional noise.

Any tips or feedback welcome.  I worked hard on reducing star size, but some of the brighter ones still look like they were taken with a newtonian almost - I never had this with an OSC.

Click through for 1:1, it's not too bad.

The difference in data Vs my 2-3 hours of OSC I shot a short while back was obviously quite eye opening.  More is ALWAYS better 😅  Just the Lum subs here were mind blowing and I could have processed that B&W image and been happy with it as the end result!

[MarkAR]

I think you have done them justice, nice colour balance. Well done.

[HunterHarling]

 I'd decrease the brightness on m82 to let some details through and drop the black point a bit though.

Nice image though! 

[geeklee]

2 hours ago, MarkAR said:

I think you have done them justice, nice colour balance. Well done.

Thanks @MarkAR 👍

45 minutes ago, HunterHarling said:

 I'd decrease the brightness on m82 to let some details through and drop the black point a bit though.

Nice image though! 

Thanks @HunterHarling. I thought dropping the black point would remove what little IFN I have, but it' still there (just...maybe).  I try to use the typical background values as I see different brightness depending on what I view it on.  The monitor I have with my processing PC shows everything very dark.  Here's the same again covering what I think you mentioned - less brightness in M82 and the black point dropped.

It won't be the last time I'll process this data over the summer, that's for sure.

Edited April 24, 2020 by geeklee