Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, M81, M82, from the City (psychwolf)

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

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Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, M81, M82, from the City

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Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, M81, M82, from the City

In a departure from common sense, I tried this shot without a filter in the heart of the city. Where it loses out is definitely in the Ha activity of the Cigar Galaxy, and Bode's Galaxy is a bit plain, so this definitely won't be the last time I image this pair. Nonetheless, with 2 hours of integration, when driving to a dark sky site doesn't work with other things to be done at home, it's nice to be able to capture these from downtown in Bortle 8/9, with just some patience and processing to draw down the gradient. Unfortunately, I'll guess some of that processing also knocked out detail, but it is what it is. Let me know if you have some techniques to try in comments.

Here's the processing flow:

Stacking via Deep Sky Stacker, Kappa Sigma 2x5, keeping 40 frames of best 75%. Manual curves adjustments - not resizing the image until I was done stretching, with a final soft s curve ending (lesson learned possibly). Manual levels adjustments, etc. Resize to a reasonable file size (24inches), upscaling pixels to print standard 130px.

Then, green gradient removal x2 using Astronomy tools saved actions and Anne's Astro Actions > color enhance. Processed into Astro Flat Pro, and finally Astronomy Tools > Lighten Only DSO and dimmer stars. No further processing on noise this time after all of that.

Original
Final
B

B

Description: Took the original through DxO photolab, denoise especially, with under 5% slider increase for vibrance, with localized light level add.

Uploaded: ...

Light Polluted skies
Beginners AP
Milwaukee Astronomical Society
Short exposures DSO

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4384323
PixInsight job	2VU0USKLG44S2J7622T330UW4IOO838Q
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	09h56m52s.23
RA (top/left)	10h05m37s.68
RA (top/right)	09h59m19s.54
RA (bottom/right)	09h47m37s.45
RA (bottom/left)	09h54m37s.92

Dec (center)	+69°07′45″.5
Dec (top/left)	+68°31′28″.6
Dec (top/right)	+70°06′07″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	+69°42′17″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+68°09′16″.8

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Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, M81, M82, from the City

Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, M81, M82, from the City

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Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, M81, M82, from the City

Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, M81, M82, from the City

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