M74 - The Phantom Galaxy

M74 (a.k.a. NGC 628 or the Phantom Galaxy) is a beautiful face-on spiral galaxy in Pisces is located about 32 million light-years away.  At about 100 billion stars and 95,000 light-years across it is slightly less than the size of our own galaxy.  The spiral arms of are particularly well developed and contain clusters of young blue stars and many star-forming nebulae.

This image is infinitely better than my previous from three years ago where half of the spiral arms were missing but it would have been better had all of the exposures been used.  As it turned out the 2.5 hrs of luminosity was either not focused well or the the sky conditions were not as good as they appeared or both, in any case I did not use it.  As a result processing was even more creative than normal.  The R, G, B was great so I kept that and made a synthetic luminosity layer in PI and did a 50% combination with it.  I then did a 20% combination of Ha into the red channel in order to enhance the Ha regions in the outer spiral arms.

I did not get all the detail I had hoped for but am happy with what I did get all things considered.  The stars were colorful as was the galaxy .  

M74 - Phantom Galaxy
Home Monroe, CT
Date: 11-1-19, 11-2-19, 11-3-19, 11-6-19
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm
f/7
Focal Reducer: Astro-Tech 0.8x Focal Reducer/Field Flattener for Refractor Telescopes
Mount: Orion Atlas Pro
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 8x 1.25"
Filter: ZWO Ha, R, G, B
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: QHY-5L-II-M attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope with Helical Focuser
Exposure: Ha 50 x 180s, R 49 x 90s, G 48 x 90s, B 54 x 90s
Gain: 139
Offset 21
Temp: 2 C
Post Processing: PixInsight, Photoshop
https://kurtzeppetello.smugmug.com/
http://astroquest1.blogspot.com/
http://youtube.com/c/AstroQuest1