I gave the data collected at an observatory called SRO in California , collected by Linda at
https://www.astrobin.com/m7ou2s/?nc=group&nce=128.
This is my first attempt at processing HaLRGB Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), this is my first full fledged data from an observatory so was excited to give it a shot, it is absolutely amazing data and showed so much detail I cannot capture from my smaller home light polluted setup! Thank you Linda for the opportunity to be part of the SRO team!
I wanted an image with some of the background galaxies and stars with color preserved although it is not the focus of the image, perhaps too much all at once, but that was my goal! In later iterations I might deemphasize the background.
Processing details:
L:
Muir Denoise
HT stretch
HDRMultiscaleTransform
LHE
Curves/HT and clip background
Ha:
MLT (noise reduction)
deconvolution
HT stretch and clip background
MLT for contrast
RGB(each):
Mure denoise with flats and bias from data for parameters
RGB:
channel combination (rRGB)
ABE
PCC
SCNR to remove green
Masked stretch
HDRMT
Color saturation
Curve color saturation
HT to clip background
LRGB:
Pixel Math to combine LRGB (RGB + 0.3*L) (had to experiment here)
GAME to create mask of the 2 cores with gradient mask
Apply mask and do a hard HDR on the cores to get detail and bring out gold with Curves saturation + color saturation
Invert mask and do a gentler HDR + MLT on the spirals
NBRGBCombination with ha with a lighter hand on Ha. did some experimenting here.
Curves and HT to fine tune the color and contrast
Apply Lum mask and adjust background using HT
DynamicCrop
ACDNR (perhaps not the best choice but will try other methods)
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