M63 (The Sunflower Galaxy) 13 hrs in LRGB

[Xiga]

Hi,

Apologies for posting this one out of season! I shot this back in early March, but only processed it this week. Truth be told, i've kind of lost my AP mojo a bit this year due to technical issues, so I decided to take a break from the hobby right after i shot this. I've recently taken it up again, and was out getting some Lum on the Cocoon Nebula a few weeks back. The data capture issues remain unfortunately (25% of subs unuseable) but what i did get i was happy with, so with any luck i might still have time to get some RGB over the coming weeks so i can actually make another finished image. Between work and the kids I think my current hit rate is only about 5 images per year lol. 

Details:

Qhy268m, -5C, Mode 1, Gain 56, Offset 25. Calibrated with Flats, Dark Flats, Darks and a BPM. 

Skywatcher ED80 w FF/FR

HEQ5-Pro 

OAG & ZWO ASI 290mm mini

Lum: 516 x 60s (8.5 hrs)

RGB 30 x 180s (1.5 hrs each)

Stacked in APP, processed in PS. 

I'm still getting to grips with LRGB processing, this is only my 2nd one so far. The SVBony filters revealed their budget roots in the Blue and Lum subs, where the stars were noticeably bloated. I really need to get a Baader IR/UV filter to put at the front of the imaging train to fix that! 

The camera is very good i must say. I'm more than impressed with it. I wasn't expecting to capture any of the faint tidal stream that loops around the top of M63, but when i came to process it i could clearly make out some of it, even if it was extremely faint! With just 80mm of aperture and a relatively slow F-ratio of 6.3, not to mention so-so skies of Bortle 5/6, i'm very impressed that the camera managed to pick any of it up at all. I've included a downsized inverted image of the Lum stack below that's had an Equalize adjustment in PS which just about shows it up. The small pixels of the IMX 571 sensor also allows for some nice cropping, so i've included a 100% crop of the galaxy itself. 

Clear skies all! 

[assouptro]

Lovely image of one of my favourite galaxys 🤩

Thanks For Sharing 

Bryan 

[Xiga]

3 hours ago, assouptro said:

Lovely image of one of my favourite galaxys 🤩

Thanks For Sharing 

Bryan 

Thanks Bryan. It's one of my favs too 🙂

The wee ed80 doesn't really have the FL for these types of targets, but with the small pixels of modern CMOS cameras you can still get some surprisingly good results just by cropping in.

[tomato]

First class, as you say plenty of detail there, even without a lot of FL.

[Dan_Paris]

Congrats for having captured the ring, not an easy task!

[Xiga]

13 hours ago, tomato said:

First class, as you say plenty of detail there, even without a lot of FL.

Thanks  🍅 

😄

10 hours ago, Dan_Paris said:

Congrats for having captured the ring, not an easy task!

Cheers Dan. It was a nice surprise to me 🙂 

[mackiedlm]

fantastic image, well done

 

[Xiga]

7 hours ago, mackiedlm said:

fantastic image, well done

 

thanks mackie! 🙂 

[AstroMuni]

Lovely detail in M63.

[Xiga]

14 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

Lovely detail in M63.

Thanks mate! 

I think having short 60s subs helped when it came to bringing out the detail in the core. Saying that however, i think i'm going to experiment with slightly longer Lum subs (120s) at Gain 0 next time i'm shooting broadband. I'm curious to see how they come out, given the much higher well depth. 

[AstroMuni]

9 hours ago, Xiga said:

i think i'm going to experiment with slightly longer Lum subs (120s) at Gain 0 next time i'm shooting broadband. I'm curious to see how they come out, given the much higher well depth. 

At gain 0 your read noise would be quite high compared to at 100.

[Xiga]

13 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

At gain 0 your read noise would be quite high compared to at 100.

I got some Lum data of the Cocoon Nebula a few weeks back, and I experimented with Mode 3 (the extended full well one) at a Gain of 16. I think there's a bug when using Gain 0 in that mode, so people recommend using a low Gain of at least 14 instead. I thought the data looked good tbh, although I don't have any data to compare it to so it's all fairly subjective. These cameras have pretty low RN even at low gains. As long as you are able to sufficiently swamp the RN then it shouldn't make any difference in the final image. I was shooting 120s subs and still able to swamp the RN by more than a factor of 10 so I'm going to give it a go for a while and see how I get on. 

[Rodd]

Love the close in--tough to pick up the faint stuff that have