Funny things can happen on Sunday nights whilst processing data from a recently completed data capture on M64. I ran the data through the pre processing steps, opened the integrated masters and, OMG - what is that luminous nebula looking stuff on the left of the image
I had not seen any hint of nebula on any of the images of M64 that I had found previously. Even the ones with a slightly wider field.
So, convinced that something disastrous had happened, I took another set of flats as it had to be something wrong with the flats - right? Did that, ran through the calibration, registration and integration - same thing
So then I thought, it can't be integrated flux nebula - can it
So we did a search on "IFN near M64" and hit
this post on CN from Rogelio Bernal Andreo. A very wide field around M64 showing TONS of IFN surrounding the galaxy. Whew! problem (which wasn't a problem) solved
I've attached a screen shot from my PI work space. The image on the left is a rotated, cropped and registered grey scale version of RBA's image to match it up against my luminance master on the right. The IFN matches up perfectly.
I was originally going to do a 100% crop due to my largish FOV but I will leave it as a slightly wider field now and see what I can do with the IFN in the processing.
Clear skies.