M63, the Sunflower Galaxy, LRGB (Rob Foster)

M63, the Sunflower Galaxy, LRGB

Revision title: Mure Denoise, plus adding 7.5 hours of Luminance

As mono imaging is still very new to me, I am trying to understand when RGB is sufficient and when LRGB adds benefit. After initially processing the RGB image, the surrounding nebulosity was really not apparent so I went back and created a synthetic luminance image from the RGB image in the linear state. Version 2 added some separately acquired luminance data, though not nearly enough after clouds rolled in last night. Either way, a significant improvement from the April 2022 DLSR image.

A flocculent galaxy that is part of the M51 Group, M63 is actually classified as a spiral galaxy and is located in Canes Venatici. Though not really apparent in the visible spectrum, imaging in near-infrared apparently reveals 2 prominent spiral arms.

Original
B
Final
C

B

Title: With the addition of some Luminance Data

Description: The first version utilized a synthetic Lum derived from the RGB image in the linear state. This version incorporates nearly 1.4 hours of L data. I will hopefully be able to capture more luminance data but the weather/clouds have not been cooperative.

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: Mure Denoise, plus adding 7.5 hours of Luminance

Description: Finally figured out how to apply Mure Denoise to the untouched LRGB subs and very impressed with how much better the first RGB channel combination looked in the linear state. While I am still struggling with producing compatible/similar stretches of the RGB and the L images, lots of trial and error yielded this result. I am learning that the non-linear L and the RGB images need to be reasonably close in terms of their stretching for the LRGB combination to work well, or to at least work better with the default settings. Still very unsure about the role of linear fit in this process! Special thanks to @Adam Block for the excellent videos on GHS; I feel like I am starting to understand the tool.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7615606
PixInsight job	ML6HRXY1T01XIBF1SC3GJVT7U7Q7FT9N
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h15m51s.21
RA (top/left)	13h17m46s.92
RA (top/right)	13h13m16s.70
RA (bottom/right)	13h13m56s.89
RA (bottom/left)	13h18m25s.16

Dec (center)	+42°02′32″.3
Dec (top/left)	+42°25′58″.9
Dec (top/right)	+42°16′01″.7
Dec (bottom/right)	+41°38′58″.9
Dec (bottom/left)	+41°48′50″.2

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