NGC 6744

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