Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn)  ·  Contains:  M 94  ·  NGC 4736
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Messier 94 in HaOIIIRGB, Jim Lindelien
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Messier 94 in HaOIIIRGB

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Messier 94 in HaOIIIRGB, Jim Lindelien
Powered byPixInsight

Messier 94 in HaOIIIRGB

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

This capture is a combination of data from mono and OSC cameras that I had mounted to the scope on various nights. I imaged M94 in the earlier hours of many evenings while waiting for my nights' principal targets to rise, collecting as much signal from each camera as possible. Gusty conditions that made guiding poor demanded many short exposures on most nights.

All stacks were drizzle integrated at 2x each sensor's native resolution for the early steps of post processing including linear noise reduction, then downscaled and the two cameras' stacks registered together for final blending, mostly in PixelMath, at the OSC's 2x scale of about 12k by 8k.

The OSC's debayered R, G, and B channels were registered and summed with the mono's L channel to create a master L channel, from which enhanced galaxy details were extracted and blended back into the full color image, under a separate mixing parameter. This let me separately dial in the dust lanes' contrast to the amount that seemed best.

Ha and OIII channels were obtained simultaneously from the OSC camera by use of STC's dual narrowband filter; the Astrodon Ha was used with the mono camera.

Linear and stretched noise reduction was via NoiseXTerminator, which revealed subtle structure in the dim outer halo of stars. Galactic core Ha and OIII channels were enhanced with Unsharp Masking and Local Histogram Equalization before blending into the final rendering.

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Camera 128MC-Pro:  bin 1x1, gain 240, -5C:
64x300sec STC Duo (Ha & OIII)
64x120sec L, 118x60sec L, 335x30sec L

Camera 6200MM-Pro: bin 1x1, gain 200, -5C:
77x120sec Ha, 120x30sec L, 70x30sec R, 60x30sec G, 60x30sec B

Total lights integration 17:22 hours

For each camera and filter, 32 flats and 32 darkflats were taken and 20 to 32 darks for each duration.

Imaged on May 20, 21, 23, 24, 26; June 5 and 6. SQM varied widely due to advancing first quarter moonlight, initially 21.78 down to 18.30.

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