M65 & M66 with 10" CDK

[John K]

Hi everyone,

M65 & M66 taken in early February 2022 from the ASV's LMDSS in Healthcote, Victoria.

Equipment used was a 10" f6.8 CDK, ASI1600mm camera, AP900 mount and LRGB filters.

Luminance 2 hours 45 minutes, RGB channels 1.5 hours each. Total Exposure: 7.25 hours. Some more Luminance would have been nice to reduce the noise after sharpening.

Processed in Pixinsight using the EZ scripts for the Luminance channel and a routine involving background neutralisation, photographic calibration, SCNR, hue saturation, curves and noise reduction for the RGB channel.

Hope you like it.

Clear skies.


John K.

[multiweb]

Gorgeous details in that one John. Gotta be stoked with this. Well done. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

A very solid image of a really great galaxy pair John, very nice job :thumbsup:

Mike

[John K]

Thanks Mike.



Cheers Marc.

I am hoping to get more Luminance data on this and hopefully the noise levels can be reduced a bit.

[gregbradley]

Nice image John.
Lovely round tight stars and good detail.
To my eye it looks like the blue channel is suppressed. I would’ve expected more bluish tinges in a spiral galaxy.

What brand is the scope?

Greg

[John K]

Thanks Greg,

Agree could probably do a better job on the colour balance. Think it's more of a case of overdoing the Red channel.

The scope is a second hand/remanufactured Orion UK CDK with re-ground primary and secondary mirrors and some other improvements.

John K.