M 106

[Stefan B]

We had a stretch of clear nights here and I dedicated three of them to M 106. My last visit is several years ago and my equipment improved a bit since then. Conditions were better now, too. So I thought it might be worth a shot. I gathered about 19 hrs of broadband and 9 hrs of duo NB. This was the result:

See https://app.astrobin.com/u/Boex?i=2bfyig for details.

Overall I am quite happy. I think there is still some continuum Ha present in M 106 which I couldn't get rid of, no matter what values I used for 'Ignore fine detail' or 'Detail size'. But it's okay I guess.

Looking at the results of two modules was really fun: HDR and SVDevon. M 106 did benefit from HDR and the DSOcore preset (the core especially, of course) and SVDecon had a very nice effect on NGC 4217. Insane what SVDecon gets out of the data.

Regards
Stefan

[decay]

A 'stretch of clear nights'? 'Three of them dedicated to M106?!' Lucky you. Again only a few hours here for me.

This is a huge improvement compared to your old version. And the Ha parts are really worth it, even if there's some continuum signal left over. The jet is very cool. I recently gave M81/M82 another try and faced the same problem(s) when using NBA module. Not 100% sure if and why, but I had the impression that levering the Gamma slider in OptiDev messes up things.

The bright blue star near NGC 4217 shows a funny colour, doesn't it? I already noticed that while processing my own image of M106 last year.

And your comment about HDR and SVDevon modules (yes, they do insane work) is quite exactly what I wrote on AB on my own image processing. Great minds think alike!

Best regards, Dietmar.

[Stefan B]

Thanks, Dietmar. Yes, I have been very lucky with the recent weather. I would have been extremely lucky if the last three days of clear skies wouldn't have been with a rather bright moon. But thus I catched some broadband on NGC 4395 and two nights of Ha for NGC 4395 which is more than 15 hrs ... a ridiculous amount for such a target with a focal length of 750 mm ... But without huge nebulae at hand

I recently gave M81/M82 another try and faced the same problem(s) when using NBA module. Not 100% sure if and why, but I had the impression that levering the Gamma slider in OptiDev messes up things.

I also had the exact same impression. When I increase OptiDev's gamma a bit (say 5-10%) it's harder to incorporate Ha in NBAccent. This was pretty obvious with my Horsehead image. There I increased gamma in OptiDev a lot (more than 1.2 I think) and it was impossible to use NBAccent. So I restored to original, left gamma untouched, did NBAccent and increased gamma afterwards somehow. Don't remember exactly. But I don't know the reason for this behaviour.

Here I also decreased shadow linearity A LOT. Despite the 19 hrs of integration time the background was pretty noisy. Maybe this didn't help either.

The bright blue star near NGC 4217 shows a funny colour, doesn't it? I already noticed that while processing my own image of M106 last year.

Definitely. It also appears strangely blue in other people's images...so maybe not a processing mistake.

Regards
Stefan