M 81

[Jim McMillan]

Hi all,

I'm posting this to remind you that we enjoy (I'm sure it's not just me) seeing the results of your work.

This image of M 81 is just under 11 hours of exposure taken over 3 nights. I won't try to add any color until the moon's not a factor again. My camera creates serious blooms and extra reflection artifacts on the brightest stars. In this case, the deblooming software didn't leave the bright double star (to the left of center) in any shape for any extra processing to show it as a double. On the brightest star, I added the star spike to hide some of the reflection artifacts. Processing was really quite simple: unsharp mask and ddp in MaxIm. I had to pick the adu range very carefully for the unsharp mask to keep it from creating dark halos around the stars that shine through the galaxy.

I hope you like it.

Jim