Quick M83 with Ha nodules

[glend (Glen)]

Never let a clear night go by, and not my usual sort of target of late, but this is a quick effort at the Southern Pinwheel galaxy to try and bring out the Ha nodules. Taken in one night, with 60s subs in LRGB and 120s high gain Ha subs, total time was only a couple of hours. Camera is the ASI1600MM-C, scope is a 10" f5 imaging newt on a CGX mount. Processed in DSS and Photoshop CC. It needs much more time spent on it and more processing attention I know. I may get back to it in coming weeks to create a new version. There is a little gradient that I have to work out. The Ha nodules are seen in magenta in this image.

Full screen image here:

http://www.astrobin.com/full/284864/0/

[RickS (Rick)]

Nice for a quickie, Glen. When you're working on the gradient see if you can pull the galaxy core back a little too.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Coming along very nicely, Glen. The stars are so sharp it is easy to distinguish lots of really tiny galaxies in the distant background.

Using H-alpha on a big bright galaxy can be very rewarding. Would you consider posting a thumb or link to just the H-alpha stack?

Best,
Mike

[glend (Glen)]

Thanks for your comments. As a skinny data experiment of course it has some problems as a result of that approach. I purposely held back the RGB saturation in the galaxy core so that the Ha would not be swamped. I should have shot the Ha with 5 min subs at least, instead due to lack of time, i tried to use 2 min ones and boost the gain (which is very doable with the ASI1600). Out of curiosity I also tried single Oiii and Sii subs and was surprised that useful data was there. I believe it is feasible to build a narrowband image of M83, and i may try that once the inevitable cloud allows.

[Atmos (Colin)]

That's a really interesting way of approaching a galaxy! I may have to give than a shot one day!