Image Description and Details : NGC 6744 - I started this project at the end of May, capturing data over a total of 10 nights. This intermediate spiral galaxy is bigger than the Milky Way, with a disk stretching 175,000 light-years across. A small, distorted companion galaxy is located nearby, which is similar to our galaxy's Large Magellanic Cloud. This companion, called NGC 6744A can be seen in the main galaxy's outer arm in the upper left of this image.

Lights -
Lum: 529 X 60 sec
Red: 200 X 60 sec
Green: 200 X 60 sec
Blue: 200 X 60 sec

Darks - 50
Flats - 50 per filter
Flat darks - 50 per filter

Total integration time - 18.82 hours

Equipment

Telescope - @celestronuniverse Edge HD 800
Camera - @zwoasi ASI294MM Pro
Filters - Optalong L-Pro & Baader RGB filters
Mount - SW EQ6-R Pro
Focuser - @primalucelab ESATTO 2”
Guidescope - Astromania 70mm guidescope
Guide camera - @zwoasi 120mm
Controller - Pegasus Astro Pocket Powerbox

Main processing steps in Pixinsight

For Luminance data

1. Calibration, registration, normalisation & stacking
2. Dynamic background extraction
3. Deconvolution
4. MultiscaleLinearTransform
5. Histogram stretch
6. Curves

For the Colour data

1. Calibration, registration, normalisation & stacking
2. Dynamic background extraction
3. MultiscaleLinearTransform
4. Histogram stretch
5. Curves

For the RGB image

1. ChannelCombination
2. Dynamic background extraction
3. PhotometricColorCalibration
4. SCNR
5. Histogram stretch
6. Extract Luminance from RGB image
7. Apply LRGBCombination (L only) on RGB image repeatedly until colours are saturated
8. Convolution

For LRGB image

1. Apply Luminance date using LRGBCombination (L only)
2. Curves
3. MorphologicalTransformation

Copyright:Peter Dunsby