M81 and 82, a year and 8+ hours later... (Rob Foster)

M81 and 82, a year and 8+ hours later...

Revision title: Adding a bit more color and unsharp mask

Compared to the 3rd image I uploaded to Astrobin in February 2022, this same target in the spring of 2023 benefits from the addition of nearly 3x data and from a year of using PI. Located in Ursa Major and the largest member of the M81 Group, Bode's Galaxy is also part of the Virgo Supercluster that also includes the Local Group and our Milky Way. Considering that M81 is 11.7 million light years from Earth, the fact that it is a relative neighbor speaks to the scale of our galactic neighborhood.

Original
B
Final
C

B

Title: Addition of Ha data, blending mono with DSLR

Description: As a first attempt at trying to process narrowband data, I thought it would be easy to collect Ha filter data from M81 (it was) and then combine with this previous recently obtained DSLR data (it wasn't). Aligning was straightforward, but the variable stretching proved to be a challenge. Gave up on trying to create a synthetic luminance for a HaLRGB image and ended up just using HaRGB. To be fair, this was not a direct comparison to the last version because the RGB image was processed differently as I didn't save the appropriate stages of the original versions, only the end results. In any case, I was at least able to figure out one way to get the Ha signal blended into the RGB image. Was it worth it for this target? I don't think I can answer that until I have shot all of the data with the ASI2600mm; blending in the narrowband from the 2600 mono with the DSLR 80D RGB data probably not the best way to answer the question. For this version, I also focused on trying to keep the color saturation a bit more "natural" looking (especially in the blues of M81), though addition of narrowband data certainly challenges the assertion of "natural". Not sure which version I like better, but glad to have gone through the exercise of acquiring and then processing narrow band data for the first time.

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: Adding a bit more color and unsharp mask

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7629302
PixInsight job	n/a
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