Leo Triplet in LHaRGB

[Padraic M]

Three fairly clear nights of broadband imaging on the Leo Triplet, including a few experiments on tuning the rig.

Total integration is 7 hours. comprising:

56x150s R

56x150s G

48x150s B

4x5 Ha

combined as LHaRGB in APP, Gimp and Noise Ninja.

I still need to do some work on mynoise reduction techniques.

 

SW Esprit 80, ASI1600MM Pro @ 20c, g139, o21.

HEQ5 Pro belt-modded and tuned.

Guiding with AA Starwave 50mm, ASI290mm mini and PHD2.

Capture sequence controlled by NINA.

 

 

[Dmack1]

Nice image Padraic, good structure showing in all three galaxies.

 

Clear over this side too so I'm wading my way through data but struggling with gradients a bit.

[Padraic M]

Thanks David, yes my gradients were pretty bad too. I just did Remove Light Pollution on each channel and combined as was. There were horrible colour bands across the sky background so I cheated and just desaturated the dark sky layer (having separated out the stars with Starnet and masked off the galaxies).  Definitely something to work on for the next image. That's why there's a noisy border around each of the galaxies - Noise Ninja actually made the colour noise worse in the masked areas when it smoothed out the sky background.

All in all I'm very pleased with this as a big step up in my processing - thanks for all the help with APP!!

[MarkAR]

Very nice Padraic, gradients can be a real pain to deal with.