M106 - don’t upset the neighbours! (Tom Gray)

M106 - don’t upset the neighbours!

Revision title: The original - Astrosharpened

Duh, I cut off the neighbour again (although I’m sure some of you would like to do this), but in this case rather good looking with a fine central dust lane. Never mind, I was delighted when I processed this image of M106, which show a good deal of detail in the core and star streams in the fainter outer arms.

I managed over 5 hours on our last good night, after a rare run of clear nights in UK. Seeing was much better, and guiding flawless, allowing me to keep the majority of my frames. Captured in RGB, at f10 in my SCT, I like the natural colour and detail in the dust lanes, pink emissions and blue star clouds in this disrupted core, which harbors a supermassive black hole. Whilst there is plenty of nebulosity , the elusive hydrogen jets require extra Ha data - for a perfect example see @Barry Wilson's stunning image taken during the same period.

Located 24 mLY from us and spanning 135,000 LY, M106 is thought to contain 400 billion stars.

Original
C
G
H
Final
I

C

Title: A little more stretch

Description: Reprocessed in Startools with a little more stretch and colour

Uploaded: ...

G

Title: Reprocessed using ASTAP

Description: 108 x 120s exposures (3 hours and 36m) calibrated, aligned and stacked in ASTAP (using 60% best quality tool) and processed in Startools 1.8. I'm happier with the colour balance and I was able to stretch this a little more without loss of detail or excessive noise. I think this is the image I'm most pleased with, especially given it was captured at f10 in my 8"SCT (2000 mm FL), always a challenge.

Uploaded: ...

H

Title: Processed in ASTAP with 80% quality filter

Description: 130 x 120s exposures (4 hours and 20m) calibrated, aligned and stacked in ASTAP (using 80% best quality subs) and processed in Startools 1.8. I'm happier with the colour balance (less magenta and green) and I was able to stretch this a little more albeit with some loss of detail and artifacts in the stars. One more revision remaining on my plan - I might try again (perhaps just a recolour of the original!)

Uploaded: ...

I

Title: The original - Astrosharpened

Description: Retrospective sharpening using George Lowry's amazing Deep Sky Detail Astrosharp AI tool
Pre-sharpened but final processed image using traditional tools in mouseover

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8008029
PixInsight job	SI13QSAFFJVVQD9MGSOLTFTGW6ZZC98I
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	12h18m57s.964
RA (top/left)	12h20m06s.768
RA (top/right)	12h17m49s.858
RA (bottom/right)	12h17m49s.631
RA (bottom/left)	12h20m05s.583

Dec (center)	+47°17′38″.68
Dec (top/left)	+47°24′59″.48
Dec (top/right)	+47°25′11″.58
Dec (bottom/right)	+47°10′15″.95
Dec (bottom/left)	+47°10′02″.98

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