No Filter - M51

[Steorra]

After going to a ASI 294 MC PRO from a DSLR I didnt have a light pollution filter I purchased a UV IR cut filter for 7 quid. And in bortle 5/6 skies with a white zone less that 2 miles from me I decided to go for unfiltered imaging. And im pleasently surpised with the outcome. I went for M51 as its high in the sky away from light domes and manged to get only 1.5 hours of 300 second expoures at 120 gain. The allitude of the target definetly helped but I cant beleive have well it turned out.

[discardedastro]

Very impressive for Bortle 5/6!

You've got a bit of background which could get cancelled out with some processing, and colours look a bit blueish - suspect this is a side effect of processing to remove sodium glow? You might want to have a play with masks to protect the brighter light sources. But very nicely done. Focus is spot on!

Hope you don't mind but I had a little play in PI to try and bring out some colour - results attached. The data's really good - I did one which I just did a background subtraction, solved the image, corrected colour balance with PhotometricColorCorrection, and then tweaked saturation with a mask a little. The other I also desaturated and denoised the darker background areas of the image.

Really good data and lovely framing - got a lot of the little galaxies around M51 in there!

Edited April 10, 2021 by discardedastro

[Tan Zhi Qi]

Beautiful shot! I live in a bortle 5 zone too and you've given me hope! 

[breakstuff]

Wow, fantastic image. This place is so inspiring.