Scope: C8 f/8 Location: Dos Picos Park, Ramona, CA 27 November 2005 Camera: Artemis285
Exposure: 11 x 240 sec Luminance exposures with IR block (2x2 bin), 8 x 120 sec (3x3 bin) RGB exposures.
Processing: Images were captured in Artemis Capture (as FITs). Aligned/stacked in Registax 3 and saved as FITS. Luminance and Color channels were scaled and rough color balanced in Astroart. Channels were co-registered in Astroart. Central Gradient removal was also done in Astroart. Final LRGB combine was done in Photoshop using Luminance Layering (or LLRGB). Selective sharpening with layer mask was applied to galaxy dust lanes and arms. Brighter star sizes were managed with a light minimum filter applied with mask. Seeing was not so good and there were tracking errors due to a slight breeze so some star repair was made on the field stars. Photoshop was also used to subtract background noise from the luminance channel. Color balancing and final touches were done in Photoshop. SGBNR was used to smooth remaining background noise on the Luminance construction and to a lighter extent on the final result. Final Image size is approximately 870x 650.
North is up in this image. The image was guided for all exposures. M74 is a grand design galaxy in face on orientation to Earth. Its distance is estimated at 30 to 40 million light years. This image replaces an earlier image that can be seen in the Archives here. Horizontal FOV is 19'.
Image center is approximately - Equatorial 2000: RA: 01h 36m 42s Dec: +15°47'00"