M33 - Triangulum Galaxy (Steve Ludwig)

M33 - Triangulum Galaxy

Equipment

- Main scope: Bresser Messier 10" Newton (254/1270)

- Main camera: Nikon D3300 (unmodified)

- Guide scope: Orion AC 50/162 Deluxe Mini

- Guide camera: ZWO ASI 290MC

- Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-R

- Explore Scientific HR coma corrector

Acquisition

- 78 lights x 300 s = 6 h 30 min

- no dark, flat, bias frames

- no filters

- ISO 800

- Bortle 4

Processing (for latest image revision)

- stacked in DSS

-> bilinear debayer method & median kappa sigma clipping

- unmodified TIF opened in PixInsight

-> STF stretch

-> dynamic crop

-> dynamic background extraction

-> background neutralization

-> color calibration

-> histogram transformation

-> creation of lightness mask that covers most of the galaxy but not the background

-> (masked) local histogram equalization to increase contrast

-> (masked) unsharp mask to increase sharpness / details

-> curves transformation to increase color saturation

-> creation of lightness mask that covers the background only

-> (masked) curves transformation to reduce saturation (and therefore color noise) of background

-> resample 50% to improve general noise (not much detail loss as the image was oversampled anyway)

-> mild ACDNR with maximum "bright sides edge protection" to not lose much of the detail again

-> final histogram / curves transformations

-> final background neutralization to remove the bluish background tint I got from all the curves / histogram transformations done before

-> saved as jpg

Original
R
Final
S

R

Description: I started completely from the beginning and focused more on details than on noise reduction. By using lightness masks for processes that tend to increase noise, I could limit the background noise to a minimum. What I got in the end is a much sharper image with significantly more details. Additionally, I pushed the saturation a bit more and did another final background neutralization as the background got a bluish tint due to all the histogram / curves transformations I did before.

Uploaded: ...

S

Description: In the latest revision I applied some further curves/histogram fine-tuning. Furthermore, I did a resample (90%) to get rid of some minor processing artifacts.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
PixInsight job	0R6VRC2OK6VPHD4LL6W7NBJ6T97JZJOB
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	01h33m47s.51
RA (top/left)	01h33m48s.53
RA (top/right)	01h31m29s.65
RA (bottom/right)	01h33m46s.27
RA (bottom/left)	01h36m05s.69

Dec (center)	+30°37′25″.1
Dec (top/left)	+31°08′50″.4
Dec (top/right)	+30°27′12″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	+30°06′04″.9
Dec (bottom/left)	+30°47′33″.0

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