M81 with 533MM / 150PDS first attempt at mono RGB

[Grimbles]

Hi Everyone

This is my first attempt at mono RGB with the 533MM.  Taken over 3 nights trying to dodge clouds and the impact of gusty winds hence the set of short exposures. I tried to be quite brutal when discarding the dodgy lights.  I did take a series of Luminance light but have not used them in this iteration.  Any tips etc welcome.

533MM, 150PDs, Heq5, Finder Guider

Captured with Sharpcap  Gain 100 , Brightness 20 Temp -5

Red  Tot 69 min   (17 x 30 sec and 52 x 60 sec)

Green Tot 73 min  (16 x 30 sec and 64 X 60 sec)

Blue Tot 67 min (17 x 30 sec and 50 x 60 sec)

Flats, Darks, Bias etc

Processed with APP and PS

Edited March 24 by Grimbles

[Elp]

Quite nice detail in the image, looks good.

I'd look at the image histogram again, looks like the red channel peak is higher than the rest, if you align the peaks with curves editing, make slight adjustments between shadow, midtown and highlights on the curve, you'll get a more "natural" colour temperature look.

Edited March 24 by Elp

[Grimbles]

13 minutes ago, Elp said:

Quite nice detail in the image, looks good.

I'd look at the image histogram again, looks like the red channel peak is higher than the rest, if you align the peaks with curves editing, make slight adjustments between shadow, midtown and highlights on the curve, you'll get a more "natural" colour temperature look.

Many thanks for the tip i will give that a go later today, i did think the outer core was a little too reddish but trying to deal with it in isolation was defeating me.

[Elp]

You can see the red even in the blackness of space, you can also try adjustment using selective colour and just adjusting the black point under red colour option.

[ollypenrice]

I agree with Elp. This would be great with the colour balance eased away from red in the bright parts.

Olly

[Grimbles]

21 hours ago, Elp said:

You can see the red even in the blackness of space, you can also try adjustment using selective colour and just adjusting the black point under red colour option.

 

14 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I agree with Elp. This would be great with the colour balance eased away from red in the bright parts.

Olly

Thanks for the advice, I have made a few tweaks to the red channel as per your suggestions.  I have to say that I am genuinely colour blind (red/green) which from what i understand is a brain colour interpretation issue rather than an eye defect, so the strange thing is that once someone points out the correct colours of things i can see them. I tend to struggle most with darker shades of red and lighter yellows/greens against whites. It has given my wife much amusement over the years and caused some confusion 😀.

Hopefully this is an improvement.

 

[Elp]

An improvement. You can also utilise photometric colour correction in Siril (free astro software), Pixinsight or equivalent which automatically balances out the colour balance based on reference data of the target, it works well on getting the star colours in the region right too. But its all subjective most of the time, if it looks good to you then that should be sufficient for your needs.