The idea of this image was to be a collaboration between my data and the data of Ivaylo of M106. Back in the day when he posted his image of this big and beautiful galaxy I was very impressed. Several years later I managed to acquire data by myself of the same target with my C9.25 and approached Ivaylo with the suggestion to combine/collaborate and see what happens. Luckily he agreed and shared his data

And the stacking and integration began... My data is taken with a color camera and his - with mono. I process my color-cam data channel by channel so I expected the integration process not to be a problem. But no matter how hard I tried I was unable to get a good result In my frames only the core of the galaxy is visible and in the data of Ivaylo - the full galaxy is visible.

After numerous tries I reached the conclusion that my data is garbage and the one of Ivaylo - top notch. My data didn't contribute at all to the stack and only made things worse - the core in the combined integration is ok but the outer regions are full of unpleasant noise artifacts.

So the only thing left for me was to process the mono files. I really enjoyed it as it was full of new things to explore. The color data was bin2 so I up-scaled to bin1. I aligned with the best luminance frame as reference. Then selected the best frames as reference for stacking for the separate L, R, G, B and HA stacks. Then processed RGB and L separately. Prior to stretching I added the HA data to the RGB file. Then performed separate GHS stretches to the RGB and L frames. And then the miracle happened - the RGB data was of low quality due to the bin2 -> bin1 upscaling, but when I added the luminance data - wow everything started to look pristine with almost no noise

I am happy that Ivaylo agreed to publish my processing of his data.

The unexpected result for me was that I was unable to contribute with data but managed to contribute with processing and get a nice final result in my opinion.

The properties of Ivaylo's image are as follows:
Equipment:
Imaging Telescopes Or Lenses: TS-Optics RC 10" Truss
Imaging Cameras: QHYCCD QHY22
Mounts: iOptron CEM60
Filters: Astrodon HII-3nm · Astrodon B Gen II · Astrodon G Gen II · Astrodon R Gen II · Astrodon L Gen II
Accessories: OAG · TS-Optics CCD47-S x0.67
Software: Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight · APT (APT - Astro Photography Tool) · PHD guiding
Guiding Cameras: QHYCCD QHY5L-II M

Dates: March 26, 2021, April 9 - 10, 2021
Frames:
Astrodon B Gen II:24×300″ (2h) -45°C bin 2x2
Astrodon G Gen II:18×300″ (1h 30′) -45°C bin 2x2
Astrodon HII-3nm:20×900″ (5h) -40°C bin 1x1
Astrodon L Gen II:27×600″ (4h 30′) -40°C bin 1x1
Astrodon R Gen II:24×300″ (2h) -45°C bin 2x2
Integration: 15h
Avg. Moon age: 22.47 days
Avg. Moon phase: 33.88%CS,

CS
Ivan