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Scope: Megrez II f/3.1, Location: Del Mar, CA 13 May 2006 Camera: Artemis285
Exposure: 10 x 60 sec Luminance exposures with IR block, 8 x 45 sec (2x2 bin) RGB exposures.
Note: High res data for M81 taken 21, December, 2005; for M82 - 23 January, 2004
Processing: Images were captured in Artemis Capture (as FITs). Aligned/stacked in Registax 3 and saved as FITS. Luminance and Color channels were numerically scaled and color balanced in Astroart. Channels were co-registered in Astroart. Central gradient was removed in Astroart. Curves and Levels applied in Photoshop to optimize object features. Final LRGB combine was done in Photoshop using Luminance Layering (or LLRGB). This image incorporates some high resolution image data from narrow field images of M81 and M82. Those images were aligned into this wide field image as layers and then merged. SGBNR was used to smooth background noise on the luminance construction and the final result. Final Image size is approximately 1392x1040.
North is up in this image. The image was guided for all exposures. M81 is the central larger galaxy and M82 is the edge on galaxy toward the top of the image. The small galaxy in the lower left is NGC 3077. Close up exposures incorporated into this image are here for M81 and M82 . Horizontal FOV is 122'
Image center is approximately - Equatorial 2000: RA: 09h 57m 46s Dec: +69°06'01"