Sunflower Galaxy

Target details

Messier 63 (NGC 5055), sometimes called the Sunflower Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici, about 29 million light-years away. It has no central bar and loosely wound arms, but in visible light its spiral pattern is patchy rather than continuous, so it's described as 'flocculent' – although infrared images show two symmetrical arms. It belongs to the M51 Group with the Whirlpool Galaxy. In May 1971 a supernova, SN 1971 I, flared up in one of its arms and reached magnitude 11.8.

Capture details

Data captured over 6 nights between 19th January & 30th March, 2020.
78x 2 minute exposures with Blue filter (Binned 2x2).
76x 2 minute exposures with Green filter (Binned 2x2).
75x 2 minute exposures with Red filter (Binned 2x2).
376x 3 minute exposures with Luminance filter.

Total Exposure = 26.4 hours.

Equipment details

Skywatcher Quattro 200 CF
NEQ6 Pro
Atik 460 Mono
Skywatcher ST-80
QHY5L-II

Processing details

This image was processed in Pixinsight & Lightroom.
Calibration and Stacking in Pixinsight using Batch PreProcessing.
Dynamic Crop - To remove black edges & integration artifacts. (Each Channel)
Automatic Background Extraction - To remove gradients. (RGB Channels)
Dynamic Background Extraction - To remove gradients. (Lum Channel)
Linear Fit - To match brightness of RGB channels (RGB Channels Separately)
Channel Combination - To combine RGB channels.
Photometric Colour Calibration - To calibrate colours.
SCNR - To remove green cast.
Deconvolution - To bring out some fine detail & tighten stars, 100 iterations. (Luminance only)
Multiscale Linear Transform - Noise reduction. (Luminace & RGB separately)
Histogram Transformation - To stretch the RGB & Lum. (Using statistics process to keep background levels evenly)
LRGB Combination - To blend my luminance image with my RGB image.
Histogram Transformation - To clip blacks slightly.
HDR Multiscale Transform - To recover detail in the galaxy core & inner arms, with star mask in place.
UnsharpMask - To sharpen with inverted nebula mask in place to exclude stars & background.
Local Histogram Equalisation - To sharpen / add contrast, with previous mask in place.
Dynamic Crop - To crop away most of the background.
Curves Transformation - To boost contrast.
Curves Transformation - To boost galaxy saturation, with inverted nebula mask in place.
Histogram Transformation - To darken background, with nebula mask in place.
Dark Structure Enhance Script - To pull back some contrast in the galactic arms.
TVGDenoise - To reduce Deconvolution artifacts on galaxy edge, with range mask in place.

Export as JPEG and import into Lightroom.

Export final JPEG for upload.