First go at M51

[Jonny_H]

Hi all,

After weeks of horrible weather here in the UK - last night saw a window of opportunity so thought I would have a go at M51 for the first time.

I didn't have long before tiredness caught up with me so only got 12 x 300s in. Perhaps I will add more in the next day or two. Stacked in APP and very (and I mean very) quickly tinkered with in PI.

Comments and criticism always welcome.

Thanks,

Jonny

[Jonny_H]

I've just realised that my flats haven't worked. I'm thinking I must have selected the wrong ones for stacking 🤔

[Adreneline]

Hi Jonny.

Flats aside I think this is excellent.

I hope you don't mind but I did a bit more tinkering in PI. On my screen the image has a noticable magenta cast (sampling the background showed the R and B were consistently above G) so I inverted the image and removed that and then I re-inverted the image and removed the resulting green cast, both with SCNR. I then reduced the noise a little bit with MLT and finally aligned the histograms in HT - Red needed a very slight adjustment. I've attached a cropped TIF.

I know many people like magenta in an image but magenta is a colour that does not occur in the spectrum so I tend to feel it should be removed. This is purely a personal thing and not based on any science or accuracy or anything quantifiable - it's just me!

Great image - magenta or not! I wish my first attempt at M51 had been this good.

Adrian

M51A_aa.tif

[Jonny_H]

Thanks for your comments, Adrian,

And thank you for the revised image.  It does indeed look much better.  I think i need more practice in post-processing.  Admittedly I didn't spend long on the image at all but to be honest even if i had spent hours on it - it probably wouldn't have looked any different than my first go 🤣   

I will have a play in PI a little later to see if i can get close to what you have done as it looks great.  I might be in touch for some pointers later 🙂

Regards,

Jon