M51 in HaLRGB (Xavier Ducrohet)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: IC 4263 · IC 4277 · IC 4278 · M 51 · NGC 5194 · NGC 5195 · Whirlpool Galaxy

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M51 in HaLRGB

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M51 in HaLRGB

Messier 51 in LRGB + Ha using continuum subtraction.

Started acquiring this just a few days before a full moon because that's when weather finally relented here in Norther California and I was really itching to finally get some images. After getting 8hr each of RGB, I wasn't super happy with the amount of noise (unsurprisingly) so I decided to get some Luminance. At the same time I worked on a couple of other targets (Markarian Chain and M101), and then wanted to try to get some Ha. This ended up taking a long time to acquire and turned out to be my largest and most ambitious project so far.

Processing was challenging (starting with the sheer number of frames), but I followed several tutorials from Adam Block that really helped (specifically on LRGB combination and Ha integration). Main challenges was finding the right amount of Ha to blend into the R (and B) channels when the visual result is quite different post stretch and LRGB combination. This led to many, many trials and errors. I was originally going to acquire more Ha but the way it's blended in, I'm really not sure how much difference that would have made, so I decided to stop here. Feedback and comments welcome!

SF Bay Area Imagers

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9885302
PixInsight job	DAKR4V8Y2P126LV71QNT5GB68HOBQ3PI
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h29m51s.76
RA (top/left)	13h31m20s.57
RA (top/right)	13h31m21s.48
RA (bottom/right)	13h28m22s.90
RA (bottom/left)	13h28m23s.22

Dec (center)	+47°12′52″.8
Dec (top/left)	+46°54′24″.4
Dec (top/right)	+47°31′13″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	+47°31′12″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+46°54′23″.3

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M51 in HaLRGB

M51 in HaLRGB

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M51 in HaLRGB

M51 in HaLRGB

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