This was the second dataset I captured with the CDK17 last year. The extremely faint jets or tidal streams and the very bright inner ring in the core made it a very difficult process and I've only just now gotten it close to the way I want it. The odd "dog leg" tidal stream is discussed in this paper:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010A%26A...521A..20G/abstractThe FWHM of the channel masters varied quite a bit. The Ha was lowest at 1.21", Luminance was 1.58", and the RGB was 1.48", 1.33", and 1.76" respectively. The Ha was continuum subtracted and added to the RGB. Outside of the core ring there was very little Ha to add.
I processed the data at least 5 times over the year and the sticking point was the stretch. With this version I ended up stretching the starless galaxy with a histogram transformation stretch followed by HDRMT. Then I used successive curves adjustments to bring up the background, revealing the tidal streams. Finally I made contrast and brightness adjustments. The stars were stretched separately with a light histogram transform stretch followed by a curves adjustment to bring up the fainter stars without blowing out the cores.
BlurX was used at a .46 strength on both the Luminance and the RGB data. Running it on the RGB data helped color some of the small details that would have been otherwise lost.
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