M106 LRGB 8th and 23rd of March

[Whippy]

Whoever said that LRGB is quicker than OSC is not quite telling the truth . It took me over 6 hours to grab 3 hours of RGB data last night! After grabbing the luminence on the 8th of March (see here: http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/99067-m106-8th-march.html ), a relatively moonless sky was on last night so I thought I'd add some RGB to it. To be honest, some of my LRGB efforts have been a bit hit and miss so I decided to try taking the data unbinned as normally I'd use 2x2 binning and also processing my data differently by using Maxim to stack and combine rather than DSS and photoshop as usual for the rest. Have to say I'm quite chuffed with with result, this one's a hit .

Anyways, M106. Total exposure time 7 hours 40 mins (Luminence 4 hours 40 mins (28 x 10 mins), RGB 1 hour each (10 x 6 mins, unbinned). Taken with an Atik 16hr with Baader RGB and IR cut filters and an IDAS LP filter through an ED80. Guided by a ZS66, QHY5 and PHD. Luminence stacked in DSS, RGB stacked, combined and aligned in Maxim and all processed and glued together in photoshop.

Tony..

[MartinB]

Nice work Tony and you've captured a few other faint galaxies as well. It's a lovely galaxy with a lot going on in the core which you've managed to capture here.

Which version of maxim did you use? Did you use the colour scaling tool in the combine colour box and check auto equalise background? The pic looks a tinge red

[Catanonia]

Oh that is nice and something hopefully I will be trying soon when I switch to CCD.

7 hours, a lot and I am too guessing that LRGB takes much longer than OSC.

[Whippy]

Thanks Martin, I know excatly what you're saying about the Red tint! I find getting the colour balance 'right' extremely tricky as it's a quite subjective exercise (a google image search of M106 brings up a whole host of colour schemes) plus I'm colour blind to a degree so unless it's blatantly obvious what the colours 'should' be it's a bit of a stab in the dark for me!

I was going to ask you about stacking and combining/aligning in Maxim once you got yourself sorted and settled from your trip. I'm using version 4.62 and I can't honestly remember what I did, Tuesday morning was a bit of a blur . IIRC, I followed the help files and went from there but going back into Maxim, I can see that the auto equalise background box was checked but there's not colour scaling tool that I can see. Is it a Maxim V5 tool?

Depending on how Spurs play tonight, I might give the RGB another process and see what happens.

Oh that is nice and something hopefully I will be trying soon when I switch to CCD.

7 hours, a lot and I am too guessing that LRGB takes much longer than OSC.

Cheers , the core itself is quite bright but it's the outer faint stuff that takes time to look smooth. In fairness, the RGB only took ages partly down to equipment issues and my incompetance! I'd be interested to see how it would look if someone used a colour camera with the 285 chip and took the same amount of exposure time on it.

What has surprised me was that this was the first time I haven't binned my colour data and there's only an hour of each channel and yet there's a fair bit of data to play with.

Tony..

[Whippy]

As it happens, I've managed to re-process the RGB before the start of the game and finished it off during half-time. I think this is a little better .

Tony..

[MartinB]

Much better Tony. We could go over Maxim and colour combining at Lucksall if you like. The colour scaling options should be there under combine colour. If we can find a good scaling then this should be pretty repeatable which should be a big help if you have problems with colour vision.

[Catanonia]

Much much better in the 2nd image, better colour balance.

[Beyond_Vision]

Nicely reprocessed Tony looking great now

Regards

Kevin

[Whippy]

Thanks guys . Not been a bad evening so far, sorting this out, Spurs beat Fulham in the FA cup plus Man City and Aston Villa dropping points in the league means it's all good in this house.

I'd love to go over Maxim with you at Lucksall Martin but unfortunately I won't be attending .

Tony..

[adamsp123]

The second image is looking very nice indeed, a great job.

[daz]

Hey amigo!!

That's a great image, and nicely done on the 2nd one!!

[Whippy]

Cheers guys .

Tony..

[Dangerous-Dave]

Great shot. I had a go at this recently with the H9 but yours looks miles better!

[Tim]

Lots of faint luminosity captured Tony, the second one is really nice.

Funny that you mentioned about it throwing up all sorts of colours, I have done a few hours on this with the QHY8 and it usually comes back with a greeny/turquise tint, and there was an APOD of it not too long ago that processed it that way.

For something really psychedelic, check out Ken Crawfords amazing version in which the central Ha jets are visible!

M106 with Ha Jets

Again, nice to see some piccies from you

[Whippy]

Cheers , I remembered your image of this Tim and that was one of those that stuck in my mind when I was doing the processing the first time. I think galaxies can be more subjective colour-wise than nebulae so they can have that 'marmite' factor to them, I do love doing them though. It's a shame we don't get enough clear skies to do them more often!

Ken Crawford's one is awesome, I've been looking at that for the last 10 minutes or so just zooming in and out. Small minds and all that....

Tony..

[johnh]

Great reprocess with subtle dust around the core.

John.

[ncjunk]

Great pic!