Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  Bode's Galaxy  ·  M 81  ·  NGC 3031
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M81, dkamen
M81
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Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M81, dkamen
M81
Powered byPixInsight

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Almost two months' worth of M81. For every channel there were approximately +10% more subs which I didn't keep (20% for L).

With 10 second subs I didn't have to guide, but every 60-70 subs I would pause, plate solve and correct my position (staying within 5-10 arcsecs of the target). This is essentially dithering every 60-70 subs and combined with the thousands of available subs made the raw material ideal for 2X drizzle.

I used Siril for quick integration of my material, to see what channel I needed more data for. It is super fast. And the R,G,B channels in the final image were done with Siril. But I ended up using AstropixelProcessor for L, because I found it gave slightly better SNR. Most of the linear post processing (LRGB combination, gradient removal, color calibration, stretching) was done in APP and most of the non linear finishing touches were done in Darktable. But Pixinsight did help at the very first stage (I used DynamicCrop and star alignment to register the L,R,G,B master subs) and in the middle (HDRMultiscaleTransform on the image that came out of APP and some curve work before forwarding it to Darktable).

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M81, dkamen