My Galaxy Images Seem Colourless And Impossible To Process??

[wesdon1]

Hi all. I'll do my best to keep this straight to the point.

Basically I got around 1 hour 50 minutes subs at ISO800, 60sec each sub. The target was Bodes Galaxy. Now my problem is, I can't - 

A - Tease out any colour in Bodes Galaxy 

B - I can't get spiral arms to show in Bodes galaxy, only the bright core

My suspicions are falling on a cheap filter I bought some weeks back, namely the SKYTECH CLS Canon EOS Clip Filter. I could be mistaken, but aside from causing awful green cast on subs, It just doesn't seem to allow reds, blues etc to show through in the Galaxy images? Included is the stacked and processed image. Notice how the spiral arms are practically invisible? What confuses me more though, is the little Cigar Galaxy has red and other colours, so why is Bodes so bland?? It's a mystery!? 

If anyone has any tips, i'd be very grateful! Thanks!

Canon T3i ( unmodded )

SKYTECH CLS Filter

SW 200P Newt. Reflector

Well tracked/guided with PHD2

* I don't feel the need to make the post even longer by including in the list, every single piece of equipment I used.

[Elp]

As a general rule you shouldn't use any filter other than maybe a UV/ir cut or luminence filter (on cameras sensitive to or with windows that pass UV and IR) for galaxy OSC imaging. They block out too much signal. Its not impossible, but when I had a similar filter I felt it blocked too much signal within the target. Your image above will benefit from flats and also green noise removal, maybe the latter may bring back some colour to boost. The other issue is total imaging time, it needs to be much longer.

[FunkyKoval35]

5 minutes ago, Elp said:

As a general rule you shouldn't use any filter other than maybe a UV/ir cut or luminence filter (on cameras sensitive to or with windows that pass UV and IR) for galaxy OSC imaging. They block out too much signal. Its not impossible, but when I had a similar filter I felt it blocked too much signal within the target. Your image above will benefit from flats and also green noise removal, maybe the latter may bring back some colour to boost. The other issue is total imaging time, it needs to be much longer.

I agree. A lot of light pollution, not enough exposure time - M81 is much fainter than M82. I created arificial flat and subscrat it from image in PS to confirm that.

[Albir phil]

I agree you need as much ex time as you can get , 3-4hrs if you can .

[dark knight]

I don't mean to dishearten you but the first thing i noticed was the stars seem slightly egg shaped, are you using a field flattener? Has the telescopes collimation been checked? how do you focus? what mount are you using? Maybe it was windy, a SW200p is a large telescope and even a breeze can affect results. I would definitely try again without the filter and see what difference it makes also from reading around the web there is lots of info on how to get rid of the green tinge.  More data capture is always a good thing. Maybe shoot some bias frames and add them into the stacking.