It took me a couple of months of intermittent recordings, due to bad weather, in order to gather RGB and Ha data for this wonderful face on galaxy.

I also experimented a different noise reduction process, all in non linear state.

Here below some general information about M74, aka NGC 628.

Messier 74 is a large spiral galaxy in the equatorial constellation Pisces. It is about 32 million light-years away from Earth and has a diameter of 95 kly, comparable with our Milky Way's. The galaxy contains two clearly defined spiral arms and is therefore used as an archetypal example of a grand design spiral galaxy. The galaxy's low surface brightness makes it the most difficult Messier object for amateur astronomers to observe. It is estimated that M74 hosts about 100 billion stars.

M74 was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780. He then communicated his discovery to Charles Messier, who listed the galaxy in his catalog.

Three supernovae are known to have taken place within it: SN 2002ap, SN 2003gd,[10] and SN 2013ej (the numbers denote the year). The latter was bright as 10th magnitude when viewed from the surface of Earth, so visible from almost all modern telescopes in a good night sky.

The M74 Group, a group of 5 to 7 galaxies, also includes the peculiar spiral galaxy NGC 660 and a few irregular galaxies.

In 2005 the Chandra X-ray Observatory announced its observation of an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in M74, radiating more X-ray power than a neutron star, in periodic intervals of around two hours. It has an estimated mass of 10000 M☉. This is an indicator of an intermediate-mass black hole. This would be a rather uncommon class, in between in size of stellar black holes and the massive black holes theorized to be in the center of many galaxies. Such an object is believed to form from lesser ("stellar") black holes within a star cluster. The source has been given identification number CXOU J013651.1+154547.

This galaxy has the second-lowest Earth-surface brightness of any Messier object - M101 has the lowest.