M82 a Personal Best with just 1 hour per channel! (approximately)

[assouptro]

Hi Stargazing addicts!

It really has been a difficult season, I blame myself for introducing so many changes this year!

I have a confession, Yes I am responsible for the weather in the North West UK,  Massive apologies! 

I was experimenting with new capture software (nina advanced sequencer) and a rotator (deep sky dad fr1) connected to an off axis guider, taking in to consideration of the rotation of the guide camera without recalibrating, a focus offset routine, (pegasus astro) changing objects and orientations throughout the night automatically, it has been a learning curve of the usual gradient, which has occupied far too many hours of my non astro life, and some of which should have been documented as I will most likely forget how I finally got it all talking to each other as I wanted!

This image contains captures from the 6th of March to the 21st of April 24, due to family life and work commitments, I have only recently found the time to look at the data

The first of which was my quick rendition of M13 

This next Image is of the 12million light year far away very active galaxy M82

I have imaged this galaxy before, but never achieved this level of detail!

This Image consists of just over an hour lrgb and 2 hours ha (added to the red channel) 

I have finally found the time to look at the data, and after passing it from Astropixelprocessor, Pixinsight, Graxpert, photoshop ps6 I have a couple of versions I like

I do have a question though, as this image was obtained with my trusty 12" Meade SCT with Starizona Lf focal reducer/field flattener obtaining a focal length of around 2m. There are obviously no star spikes however I have added some spikes to one version and I have mixed feelings? What do you think?

 

Or

 

I can see that more time in a darker site would allow so much more detail, but I had flats issues with my lum data so I had to rely on the RGB data to carry the image 

It is my best version of this galaxy to date!

Thanks for looking, all comments and advice welcome 

Thanks 

Bryan😊

 

 

M82-v6=with spikes.tif M82-v6=without spikes.tif

Edited August 1 by assouptro
spelling

[Vroobel]

That's a beautiful picture of the M82! 🤩 I like the jets, they are my goal as well when the season comes. 

Regarding the spikes, I love them if the optic provides them. 😉 Explicit and subtle in the meantime ones add something magical to the image. 

 

[assouptro]

1 hour ago, Vroobel said:

That's a beautiful picture of the M82! 🤩 I like the jets, they are my goal as well when the season comes. 

Regarding the spikes, I love them if the optic provides them. 😉 Explicit and subtle in the meantime ones add something magical to the image. 

 

Thank you for the comment Vroobel 

I know what you mean regarding the spikes, I’m not in the habit of adding them on f the optics didn’t produce them but I kinda like them in this image 😊

Thanks again 

Bryan 

[ONIKKINEN]

I like diffraction spikes myself, but not a fan of software implemented ones so the one without is my favourite here. And, should say thats a pretty damn good M82 for the short integration time spikes or no spikes!

Re diffraction spikes again: I have still yet to see software that actually understands what diffraction spikes are and how they should look. Added spikes are usually uniform in colour, like here, which is not at all the case in real diffraction spikes which obviously span the entire visible spectrum from center to edge. I think it should not be so hard to come up with software that can figure it out, but maybe i am wrong since i am not aware of software like this existing.

[assouptro]

9 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

I like diffraction spikes myself, but not a fan of software implemented ones so the one without is my favourite here. And, should say thats a pretty damn good M82 for the short integration time spikes or no spikes!

Re diffraction spikes again: I have still yet to see software that actually understands what diffraction spikes are and how they should look. Added spikes are usually uniform in colour, like here, which is not at all the case in real diffraction spikes which obviously span the entire visible spectrum from center to edge. I think it should not be so hard to come up with software that can figure it out, but maybe i am wrong since i am not aware of software like this existing.

Thanks for the comment Onikkinen

I know what you mean! 

You would imagine there are some star spike producing programs and add ons that could maybe do a good job? I wouldn’t know as it’s not something I’d normally consider doing as an astrophotographer (until now)

I have a couple of old add on to my version of photoshop (cs6) Annie’s actions, and another called Astronomy tools, I very rarely open them these days due to progressing on to programmes like Astropixel processor and Pixinsight 

one of these earlier photoshop add ons has an option to produce star spikes, I was looking at other images of M82 with star spikes and I had a few bright “flaring” stars after processing that I was trying to tame when I thought, hey! Why not? 
I think I’ll leave it to the optics from now on 😊

Thanks again 

Bryan 

[tomato]

Great M82, tremendous detail in the Ha jets.👍🏼

I have had a couple of half hearted goes at this galaxy and have not got anything as good as this. Your image has fired me up to try again.

[TiffsAndAstro]

Those jets look more like tendrils, they're so detailed.

[Ouroboros]

I prefer the non-spiked one.  Great picture though. I never seem to get much colour from M82 with OSC. But yours is good. 

[assouptro]

5 hours ago, tomato said:

Great M82, tremendous detail in the Ha jets.👍🏼

I have had a couple of half hearted goes at this galaxy and have not got anything as good as this. Your image has fired me up to try again.

Thank you Tomato! 
I also have had a couple of half hearted goes at this in the past and it took a couple of months for me to get around to looking at the data as I didn’t expect much from it 

I was really pleased and surprised to find I had quite a lot of detail in the jets! 
I am guessing we must have had a couple of clear calm nights when I was getting the data? 
 

Thanks again for the comments, and I am looking forward to your image when you get around to it! 😊

[assouptro]

2 hours ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

Those jets look more like tendrils, they're so detailed.

Thank you Tiffs! 
I wasn’t expecting to see so much detail either! 
I used a mixture of blurxterminator, and masks in pixinsight followed by a mix with a high pass filter in photoshop 

thanks again for the comment 

Bryan 😊

[assouptro]

2 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

I prefer the non-spiked one.  Great picture though. I never seem to get much colour from M82 with OSC. But yours is good. 

I was pleased with the results from around an hour per channel 

I have to admit there was nearly 2 hours Ha added to the red channel in pixelmath

Thanks again 

Bryan 😊

[Pompey Monkey]

They are all great renditions.

I use an esprit 80, so I don't get spikes from the optics. However an artifact of the kaf8300 I use gives spikes, albeit stubby ones, along both pixel axes on bright stars. I find that a quite pleasing bonus. 😃

What camera did you use?

[assouptro]

8 hours ago, Pompey Monkey said:

They are all great renditions.

I use an esprit 80, so I don't get spikes from the optics. However an artifact of the kaf8300 I use gives spikes, albeit stubby ones, along both pixel axes on bright stars. I find that a quite pleasing bonus. 😃

What camera did you use?

Thanks for the comment pompey!

I have a 383 (atik) version, but I haven’t seen any spikes from the chip? Maybe that’s more to do with the longer focal length I normally image at with it? 
 

That aside, the camera I used here was the Qhy268m with 2” Antlia proV rgb filters and an Antlia Edge 4.5nm ha 

Thanks again 

Bryan 😊