M81 & M82

[daemon]

There seem to have been so few imaging opportunities over the past winter, but here is approximately 6.5 hours of LRGB data that I managed to capture from here on the UK south coast this week.

• SW150PDS on EQ6R-Pro. 
• ASI1600MM.
• Stacked in APP. Processed in Pixinsight.

Thanks for looking.

[Mike Q]

Two of my top 10 visual targets.  Nice job

[Neil_104]

Nice image! Few imaging opportunities - tell me about it! I've not been out since Feb and then when I do finally get a clear night, big Moon 🤷‍♂️

[Mike Q]

50 minutes ago, Neil_104 said:

Nice image! Few imaging opportunities - tell me about it! I've not been out since Feb and then when I do finally get a clear night, big Moon 🤷‍♂️

Try not being out since late November.  

[Sunshine]

Great image!

[Servalan]

Nice image! What calibration frames did you use?

[daemon]

15 hours ago, Servalan said:

Nice image! What calibration frames did you use?

Thanks! I used 30 Flats and 30 Flat Darks.

I have not been using any normal Dark frames recently as I have found that they negatively impact the masters I create.

For some reason the image itself becomeds dark and the signal gets very much reduced. If anyone knows how to fix that I'd be happy to hear it. 😉

Maybe I will refresh my library of Darks to see if that helps - they are quite old now.

BTW, here is a slightly adjusted version. Maybe the sky is too dark here for some tastes. 🙂