M81 and M82 (Rob Foster)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: Bode's Galaxy · Cigar Galaxy · HD85161 · HD85458 · HD85533 · HD85828 · HD86574 · M 81 · M 82 · NGC 3031 · NGC 3034 · NGC 3077

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M81 and M82

Revision title: M81 and M82 Revised with SPCC and Crowman Tools

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M81 and M82

Revision title: M81 and M82 Revised with SPCC and Crowman Tools

This represents an integration over 3 nights, experimenting with different ISO levels (200, 400, 800), each calibrated with matching darks, flats, darkflats, and bias frames. I am not sure whether the oval/tear-drop shaped darker area below M81 is artifact or real; it doesn't seem to correspond with any master flat anomalies and in looking at other published images, I think I can see similar areas in some views.

Original
Final
B

B

Title: M81 and M82 Revised with SPCC and Crowman Tools

Description: More than anything, the original background was a problem with this issue because of bad flats. After applying SPCC, I had to restrain the amount of non-stellar sharpening in BXT and had to rely on the Auto settings for PSF to avoid over-sharpening and (for some reason) blowing out the core of M81/NGC 3031. That, followed by careful use of the Detail slider in NXT. StarXTerminator allowed me to go in, apply the Canon Banding Reduction Script then Clone stamp to repair the mis-matched dust motes because of the bad flats. The end result reveals a much better color balance and much better background.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6867862
PixInsight job	KNPHPB5FX6IF4CZU89EZJ805PAFQNS79
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	09h56m41s.31
RA (top/left)	10h03m49s.28
RA (top/right)	10h04m36s.64
RA (bottom/right)	09h48m56s.44
RA (bottom/left)	09h49m25s.54

Dec (center)	+69°07′42″.2
Dec (top/left)	+68°10′49″.4
Dec (top/right)	+70°02′46″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+70°03′17″.8
Dec (bottom/left)	+68°11′23″.9

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M81 and M82

Revision title: M81 and M82 Revised with SPCC and Crowman Tools

M81 and M82

Revision title: M81 and M82 Revised with SPCC and Crowman Tools

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M81 and M82

Revision title: M81 and M82 Revised with SPCC and Crowman Tools

M81 and M82

Revision title: M81 and M82 Revised with SPCC and Crowman Tools

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