Messier 101

[wimvb]

Just 4 hours of RGB data with minimal processing. But I did create a synthetic luminance for deconvolution. I plan to add at least 4 hours more of L and Ha before I'm satisfied.

As usual: imaged with my SW 190MN and ASI294MM. 20 subs each of 4 minutes R, G and B. processed in PixInsight.

 

Edited March 5, 2022 by wimvb

[Sp@ce_d]

Nice one.. it's definitely worth grabbing the Ha.

[wimvb]

Thanks, @Sp@ce_d. The galaxy is still a late night object, and new data will probably have to wait until after the coming full moon.

[powerlord]

very nice detail there. I'm hoping to get a few hours on that tonight with the new 300PDS beast.

[Xiga]

Very nice Wim. Lots of fine detail in the core there. 

I'm also working on M101 at the moment. Managed to get 3 hrs of RGB and a bunch of Lum this past week. I still need to sift through all the Lum files though (of which there are many, one thing i'm not exactly enjoying about CMOS imaging) as i know quite a few won't make the grade. This will be my first proper LRGB image, and i've been dipping my toe into Pixinsight for the first time. Not exactly loving it yet tbh, but i'm going to persist as i think it will be useful, if even just for a few processes. 

[wimvb]

I use the blink process to weed among images. Then I let subframe selector assign a weight to each image, deprnding on star fwhm and eccentricity. I do this for lum but seldom for rgb. Seems to work well.

[DaveS]

This is inspiring me to have another look at M101, a target I've shamefully ignored since a first abortive attempt back in '16 when I was living in the light-polluted hell that is London.

[Alexp]

I think this is one of the nicest M101 images I have seen. Looking forward to seeing the version with added L and Ha.

[Xiga]

3 hours ago, wimvb said:

I use the blink process to weed among images. Then I let subframe selector assign a weight to each image, deprnding on star fwhm and eccentricity. I do this for lum but seldom for rgb. Seems to work well.

Thanks Wim. 

I currently use APP for stacking and gradient reduction. I really like it for this purpose so I don't plan on changing that. Once I get a handle on Blink and SFS I'll likely just use them to identify which subs to exclude all together, before I then stack in APP.