Messier 63 (M63, NGC5055) is a beautiful spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici with approximately 400 billion stars (my image only caught 200 billion of the stars
). It is about 29 million light-years away from Earth and this object has been studied in great detail. Lots of fascinating information can be found online.
I was pleasantly surprised with this image as LRGB of galaxies in my area can be dreadful. I think I have done about 5 galaxies in the 5 years I have lived in central Florida. While 20+ hours would make this ideal (unlike my half-baked M84 image I posted recently which is woefully underexposed at 13 hrs), I am ok with this version.
I used GHS on the Lum data this time after several practice runs on old data. I am getting the hang of it but I'm still a little shaky using it. I did use ArcsinhStrtech on the RGB image to initiate it, followed by GHS to complete the stretch. After removing the Lum stars, I combined the L+RGB with PM. BlurX was used on both images prior to combining but mild NXT was used only on the Lum image. I am trying different permutations and combinations but this approach at least worked ok on this image.
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