M 51, The Whirlpool Galaxy Captured on two

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M 51, The Whirlpool Galaxy

Captured on two nights, April 9 - 10, 2026.

Telescope: Celestron C8 XLT
Primary Camera: ZWO ASI294MC Pro
Mount: iOptron cem25p
Guide Scope: Svbony 50 mm f/6 guide scope
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI224MC

Lights: 270\* @ 180 seconds each
Darks: 20 @ 180 seconds each
Flats/Dark Flats: 20 @ 180 seconds each

Processed in PixInsight using the following workflow:

Spectrophotometric Color Correction
Dynamic Crop to remove stacking artefacts from the edges
Automatic Background Extraction
BlurXTerminator (correct only)
BlurXTerminator (stellar and not-stellar with automatic PSF adjustment)
NoiseXTerminator (Intensity/color separation selected, 0.9 for each slider)
StarXTerminator (large overlap selected to reduce blown out stars)

Starless image processed -
Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch to bring out image/adjust background level
Curves transformation to stretch saturation/enhance blue slightly
Multiscale Linear Transform to sharpen detail

Star image processed -
Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch to brighten stars and reduce halos

Pixel Math used to recombine images

\*292 light frames shot, 22 rejected due to bad seeing
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M 51, The Whirlpool Galaxy Captured on two nights, April 9…

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