M74 - face-on spiral galaxy in Pisces

[AndyG]

I recently acquired the data for this galaxy image, and seeing Mike's post about his experience observing the galaxy visually inspired me to process the data into this image.



(click image for acquisition info and higher resolution versions)

[rjbokleman]

Nice!

[Paul D]

Andy,

Hijacking Hubble again I see. Great image Andy.

[AstroGeek]

M74 is much more difficult to image than it should seem to be.
Just not that many fabulous images of it out there.
Nice job here, Andy.
You seem to now prefer longer RGB subs and not taking the Luminance channel. And I'm a bit surprised that you captured so much nebulae within the arms without using a H-alpha filter.

[Bruce D]

Beautiful Andy, and I always like the sense of depth I get when there are much more distant galaxies in the frame. You da man!

[Apollo XX]

Fantastic, Andy! That's almost exactly what I was seeing in the eyepiece!

[AndyG]

Thanks for the comments guys!

You seem to now prefer longer RGB subs and not taking the Luminance channel.

I'm still experimenting with shooting just un-binned RGB subs, omitting Luminance. I'll probably stick with this strategy for a while. I find it easier to do the color balancing and stretching when the RGB masters have as low noise as possible, with all the exposure time dedicated to RGB. I create a synthetic Luminance by combining the RGB masters, so the processing workflow is basically the same.

And I'm a bit surprised that you captured so much nebulae within the arms without using a H-alpha filter.

I think the long exposure time (6+ hours) in the Red channel plus extremely dark skies (Bortle 2) helped a lot

[Bruce D]

Mike wrote:

Fantastic, Andy! That's almost exactly what I was seeing in the eyepiece!

Mike can I borrow that eyepiece some time?!