M101 31.5.21

[Sterrenland]

After months of bad weather and other things getting in the way I finally got the scope out...beautiful clear night.

Decided to spend a couple of hours on M101 with my SW 80ED and Canon DSLR. Still haven't got around to guiding and dithering...and still thinking about getting a ZWO 294MC camera!

 

[wimvb]

Very nice catch.

Have you tried using pixinsight scnr (green) on it without any mask? I think you will get clearer colours if you do. Just a thought.

[wimvb]

14 hours ago, Sterrenland said:

Still haven't got around to guiding and dithering...and still thinking about getting a ZWO 294MC camera!

Do + do. Adequate dithering will "quiet down" the background, reducing colour mottle and possible walking noise. Dither at least 12 pixels in a random or spiraling pattern. Btw, you can reduce both colour mottle and walking noise with targeted noise reduction methods in PI. For colour mottle, I can recommend MMT on 8 layers, targeting Chrominance (colour).

A cooled astro-camera is much more sensitive than a dslr, and you can take controlled calibration frames.

[Sterrenland]

13 hours ago, wimvb said:

Very nice catch.

Have you tried using pixinsight scnr (green) on it without any mask? I think you will get clearer colours if you do. Just a thought.

Had another play with the data...bit of an improvement, but agree that dithering, guiding and a better camera would help substantially! But thanks for your kind comment and help.

[wimvb]

I had a play with the jpeg from your first post. Applied scnr green, muted the mottle and pushed colours in the galaxies a bit. 

[Sterrenland]

10 hours ago, wimvb said:

I had a play with the jpeg from your first post. Applied scnr green, muted the mottle and pushed colours in the galaxies a bit. 

Thanks...looks a whole lot better than my effort. I like the more sharpened effect you've achieved and the colours are better too. Thanks for taking the time.