Michael Nolle
M51 and NGC 5195
This is the famous Whirlpool galaxy in Canes Venatici.
Imaged through an 8 inch f/8 GSO RC on an EQ8. Camera was a modified Canon EOS 700D with cooling, which kept the sensor at 0 degree Celsius. The ambient temperature was between 26 and 28 degree Celcius (about midnight). The transparency in the first night of imaging (25-26/06/2022) was pretty bad and in fact there was a moderate Saharan dust event. The backgrounds of the frames I took in the second night (22-23/07/2022) were much darker. I still combined both sets.
No filters were used.
The 57 x 3 minute exposures (total of 2h51m) were stacked with DeepSkyStacker in sigma clipping mode (dark, flats and bias correction applied). Regim didn't want to load the image, which I carefully flattened in Fitswork before, so I didn't do a B-V colour calibration, but relied on my white balance settings. Nearly all further processing was done in Affinity Photo in the following order: 1. background neutralisation and level adjustment; 2. increase in vibrance and saturation; 3. adjustment of gamma value and black point; 4. slight denoise of the entire picture; 5. sharpening of galaxies only with the clarity tool; 6. crop. In the end another slight noise reduction with Noiseware.
As usual, it could have done with more exposure time to bring better out the star tidal tails.
M51 and NGC 5195
This is the famous Whirlpool galaxy in Canes Venatici.
Imaged through an 8 inch f/8 GSO RC on an EQ8. Camera was a modified Canon EOS 700D with cooling, which kept the sensor at 0 degree Celsius. The ambient temperature was between 26 and 28 degree Celcius (about midnight). The transparency in the first night of imaging (25-26/06/2022) was pretty bad and in fact there was a moderate Saharan dust event. The backgrounds of the frames I took in the second night (22-23/07/2022) were much darker. I still combined both sets.
No filters were used.
The 57 x 3 minute exposures (total of 2h51m) were stacked with DeepSkyStacker in sigma clipping mode (dark, flats and bias correction applied). Regim didn't want to load the image, which I carefully flattened in Fitswork before, so I didn't do a B-V colour calibration, but relied on my white balance settings. Nearly all further processing was done in Affinity Photo in the following order: 1. background neutralisation and level adjustment; 2. increase in vibrance and saturation; 3. adjustment of gamma value and black point; 4. slight denoise of the entire picture; 5. sharpening of galaxies only with the clarity tool; 6. crop. In the end another slight noise reduction with Noiseware.
As usual, it could have done with more exposure time to bring better out the star tidal tails.