First effort of M83 - Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. Images were taken over 3 nights between late May and mid-July. I'm still working on my Pixinsight skills and very aware i'm not mastering it very well yet. Data acquisition is getting better with good guiding, but post processing especially working with curves has a long way to go.

Also much more data than I'm used to processing.

Equipment info:

Astrograph: Celestron RASA 8"

Mount: Celestron CGX

Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM

Filter Equipment: Starizona Filter Drawer + Baader 2" Ha/Oiii/Sii/UVIR

Software: ASIAIR + PixInsight

Exposure info:

36 x Ha 150s

4 x Ha 120s

15 x Oiii 150s

35 x Sii 150s

5 x 120s Darks

1 x 120s Flat

Processing info:

High-level processing workflow as follows:

Darks stacking using ImageIntegration for master dark (re-used old master dark)

Lights processing using ImageCalibration with master dark and flat. (didn't throw away a lot of data with better guiding, but its been a few long nights getting it working properly!!)

Image alignment using StarAlignment

Removal of bad subs using Blink

Ha + Oiii + Sii +UVIR stacking good subs using ImageIntegration

HistogramTransformation to stretch images

GAME luminance mask on UVIR since part of the data (all subs) had a lighter patch. (Only discovered this at next step, but decided to learn a little more about masks by watching a combination of Linda's Astronomy Adventures and Visibledark Astro to get me up to speed on how to download and use it!)

LRGB Combine to assign channels and give me my colour image (quite happy with how this looked initially)

CurveTransformation for some colour adjustment

Convolution to reduce a little noise

LRGB Combine with UVIR Master to restore some quality into the image

Dynamic Crop (huge data loss here given the target magnitude on my 8")

Export as JPEG, sharpen and noise reduction in LR and add a watermark in PS

I think the results are fair for 4 hours of unbalanced duration and quantity of narrowband exposures. Colour is ok for now, but i'll undoubtedly reprocess this again when i've improved more.

Feedback welcome as always!

(Why are my diffraction spikes not at right angles? Wires seem to be at right angles on the astrograph!)