M64 Blackeye Galaxy

[WolfieGlos]

Here we have M64 The Blackeye Galaxy, with data collected on 10th May and 16th May. This image was stacked with 2x drizzle in Siril as a test for the detail in the core. It's worked well, and I'm now considering this approach for other images to be honest. Really impressed with the detail in this one for nearly 4 hours of data. To be honest, I'm struggling to find a reason to add more data, it's a fairly lonely galaxy in the sky so it's not even as if there are many faint fuzzies to bring to the fore.

Comments welcome as always 🙂

ZWO ASI 585mc + Starfield 102ED with 0.8 Reducer on HEQ5
Frames - 49 x 180s and 42 x 120s at Gain 252 (03:51:00), calibrated with 4 darks, 25 darkflats and 20 flats
Filter - Astronomik L2 UV/IR Filter
Stacked in SIRIL (with 2x Drizzle)
Edited in Pixinsight, XT Suite and GIMP

#

Cropped version for core detail:

[Coco]

Wonderful

[WolfieGlos]

15 hours ago, Coco said:

Wonderful

Thanks Coco!

[windjammer]

Nice detail on the counter-rotating dust cloud

[WolfieGlos]

21 hours ago, windjammer said:

Nice detail on the counter-rotating dust cloud

Thanks! Drizzle and blur XT played a huge part in resolving the core, but the dust cloud came out nicely. I did try playing with masks and contrast to enhance it, but it looked fake, so this is “as is”. 

[Clarkey]

Some nice core detail. It might be my monitor, but it looks a touch green to me.

On 01/06/2024 at 02:24, WolfieGlos said:

stacked with 2x drizzle in Siril

I'm surprised you saw that much difference. Generally, drizzle works well for under sampled data but the 102ed and 585mc. Maybe I should have a go at drizzling some of my similarly scaled data....?

[tomato]

Great result from 4 hrs of data👍🏼

[Norris Adams]

Nice work!

The galaxy appears almost annular and the clarity of the concentric rings is impressive.

Norris

[WolfieGlos]

On 03/06/2024 at 21:55, Norris Adams said:

Nice work!

The galaxy appears almost annular and the clarity of the concentric rings is impressive.

Norris

Thanks 🙂

On 03/06/2024 at 18:18, tomato said:

Great result from 4 hrs of data👍🏼

Thanks Steve 🙂

On 03/06/2024 at 14:00, Clarkey said:

Some nice core detail. It might be my monitor, but it looks a touch green to me.

I'm surprised you saw that much difference. Generally, drizzle works well for under sampled data but the 102ed and 585mc. Maybe I should have a go at drizzling some of my similarly scaled data....?

Thanks Clarkey. I'll take a look at the green, I ran SCNR on it so I'm surprised if that's the case.

Yeah, the 102ed and 585mc with the 0.8 reducer is working at 1.05"x1.05" per pixel, and my guiding has been generally around 0.9-1.2" as of late, so not the best. The drizzle was a shot in the dark to be fair, the original stack was very blocky in the core so I tried the drizzle and it obviously came out much smoother, and I used the exact same processing thanks to PI's history tab. Drizzle is not something I've used since learning AP if I recall, so it was a surprise to me.