Observation by Graham Roberts: Messier 101

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Observer

Graham Roberts

Observed

2019 Mar 29 - 22:00

Uploaded

2019 Jun 08 - 19:58

Objects

M101

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Constellation

Ursa Major

Field centre

RA: 14^h03^m
Dec: +54°20'
Position angle: -104°03'

Field size

0°43' × 0°41'

Equipment

William Optics GT81 & 50mm guidescope
ZWO1600MM-Cool mono CMOS sensor

Exposure

L 31 x 180 sec HaRGB each 16×180 sec

Location

Fairvale Observatory – Redhill – Surrey – UK

Target name

Messier 101

Title

Messier 101

About this image

Graham comments that: With nearly 5-hours of subs, processing of M101 would be a challenge in order to bring out the galaxy’s colours and perhaps highlight the stellar nursery areas that are found along the spiral arms and are rich in Ha-light. To do this I first changed the RGB image stack to Lab Colour in Photoshop, increased the saturation in the (a) and (b) channels before returning to RGB mode. This had the desired effect of successfully enhancing the colours, which can otherwise look washed-out after stacking, stretching and combining. After this I split the RGB channels and pasted the Ha-stack into the Red channel, before re-combining again into an RGB image, at which point the H II regions along the spiral arms just lit up! These were both new processing techniques for me that greatly improved the final image and hold great promise for processing HaLRGB objects in the future.

Files associated with this observation

wk23_19_M101_roberts_230519.png (439.2 kB)

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