UPDATE 02. Jan. 2023 ##############################I did a reprocessing of my old data with some new techniques:
- AstroPixelProcessor: Stacking; Crop; Remove Light Pollution (RGB & Ha)
- PixInsight: BlurXTerminator (RGB & Ha)
- AstroPixelProcessor: HSL selective color; Stretching (1x high & 1x low stretch for RGB; 1 middle stretch for Ha )
- Photoshop: combine the two RGB stretches (to highlight the faint tidal debris while not overexposing the core); StarXTerminator (RGB & Ha); NoiseXTerminator (RGB); fine tune the stretch and colors with CameraRawFilter; RED-HALPHA starless continuum subtraction, to get a smooth Ha image, "Screen" Ha over RGB; selective sharpening via masks; include stars with "Linear Dodge (Add)" and increase their saturation
Here is a comparison between my old and new processing (gif is not full resolution):
[b]#################################################[/b]
Still some goods from the unexpected amounts of clear sky, that happened in Germany during the last New-moon. I would have processed it earlier, but I lost 5 nights of clear sky because of a funny "accident" that took all of my attention. After cleaning all of my optics, and suddenly all of my pictures lost significant amount of detail! Turns out that it wasn't my cleaning - but due to a combination of the Sahara-Sand and moonlight
So I finally processed the 11 hours of M106. This will be my last picture before my change to a bigger mount (and also before installing an aperture ring).
M106 is an active Galaxy in about 25 million light-years distance. It is 135.000 ly in diameter and is similar to M31 in size and luminosity. M106 actually played an important role in calibration the "cosmic distance ladder". The analysis of M106's "Cepheids" led to a key fundamental step in improving quantification of distances to other galaxies in the universe.
Comments