M81 and M82 (weine006)

M81 and M82

Pixinsight has many new updates and I thought M81 and M82 were good targets this year to use the scripts on.
Started with 14.7 hours of data of RGB plus Ha filters. Standard non-drizzled WBPP. SPCC after ChannelCombination. The new GradientCorrection worked well on a left to right gradient. Worked on linear RGB and Ha masters with RC and Curves processes. Then with the linear starless masters, used the recent CombineHaWithRGB script with Ha strength at 1.6. Stretched with HT and sharpened with LHE and UnsharpMask. Curves saturation, etc. For the RGB stars-only image, did a light stretch on the entire image, then masked the area around M81 and stretched again. This brought up the main background stars sufficiently without over-stretching the red "stars" in the area of the HII regions which I think leads to white spots in the middle of what should be homogenously red HII regions. Then used the CombineImages script at 1:1 with the "screen" mode. Then wanted to increase the saturation of the yellow core and blueish arms without affecting the red HII regions. So used the ColorMask_mod script to select the red color then inverted the resulting mask to protect the red areas while using Curves. The sky background had a slight red cast (probably from the Ha RGB blending script) so I masked the stars and galaxies and using HT, brought down the red channel a bit.
I could see traces of the galactic cirrus in the image but with a integration time of only 14 hours and with most of the RGB imaging time done under a half-moon with mag/arcsec^2 < 19.8, this image was not a prime candidate for aggressive stretching to show the dust.

I was happy to work with all the Pixinsight updates created by contributors from all across the globe. But sometimes it's hard to keep up with all the new techniques !

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9412541
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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M81 and M82

M81 and M82

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Image Index:

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M81 and M82

M81 and M82

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