M63 (Sunflower Galaxy) (Joel Shepherd)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 63 · NGC 5055 · Sunflower galaxy

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M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

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M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

This is probably the last hurrah for my 8" Edge. I've learned a lot (with the usual commensurate cost in effort and frustrations) from its long focal length and moving mirror but after a couple of years I've concluded that it's not the scope that I look forward to taking out. Will find it a more appreciative home.

This is from just under six hours of RGB over one night, with a synthetic luminance. While the green channel lights were being taken, some high thin clouds came through so I ended up discarding a couple of lights and the rest don't have SNR on par with the other two channels. This target has become kind of a benchmark for my equipment, capture and processing skills, so I'm looking forward to coming back to it in a couple years with another scope that hasn't quite yet made it into service ...

Original
Final
B

B

Description: I reprocessed this, trying out Mure Denoise for the first time, and taking a different approach to stretching as well. Mure Denoise made it possible to pull out the fainter edges of the galaxy without bringing up a ton of noise in the background. A different approach to stretching seemed to lead to better color balance and brightness.

The brightest stars have some kind of weird chromatic aberration. I'm not sure if it's atmospheric (I didn't think the target was particularly low) or some misalignment in the light path. Disappointing, but there it is.

Uploaded: ...

Messier Objects
Suburban Astrophotography
Images from the EdgeHD Series
N.I.N.A. Users

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
PixInsight job	R0WXHNP2ZMH2EKQ6F1W5UO94WG9SZT5I
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	13h15m49s.45
RA (top/left)	13h16m27s.74
RA (top/right)	13h14m18s.80
RA (bottom/right)	13h15m11s.66
RA (bottom/left)	13h17m20s.30

Dec (center)	+42°01′49″.2
Dec (top/left)	+42°17′36″.2
Dec (top/right)	+42°05′42″.2
Dec (bottom/right)	+41°46′03″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	+41°57′53″.8

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M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

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