I don't know if people are really all that interested in how I go about my imaging, or if they want to see images are works in progress. I don't know if they want to just see a finished image, but I thought this might appear interesting to some.
It's been a few months now of collecting data on this project. So far I have been collecting data on the luminance and Ha. I had to reject a heap of data because I had so many dust motes on the chamber window that I could not calibrate out with flats. After sorting through the older frames to see which ones were salvageable and then collecting some more frames I am coming to the point at which the luminance will be completed.
This luminance image is 12.5 hours. I plan on something around 20 hours or so of luminance for the finished image and then around 4 hours each for the colour. My thinking here is that I have found collecting 3-5 hours in each colour really makes processing the colour very easy and allows a liberal use of saturation without the introduction of a lot of noise. Nor do I need to do smoothing. The luminance strategy is to collect enough data to show the optical jets as clearly as possible as well as the back ground galaxies. The target is not yet transiting the zenith at dark so there is a bit more time on my side to achieve this goal; so long as the skies are clear enough through the new moon cycles.
Click here for larger resolution image.
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