M74 - Galaxy in Pisces. 14.02.2002 (17:50 - 18:53 UT) Resolution: 3.14 arcsec/pixel Camera: Vesta 675SC + 0.6FR Telescope: 8" F6 Orion Europa Newtonian Result focal ratio: F3.6 Exposure: 37x32s (gain 100%), 25xDF Seeing: lim.magnitude for naked eye 4.5, temperature 1°C Finally I succeeded to capture spiral arms in M74. M74 is together with hypernova SN2002ap Stars up to17.1 mag are visible. The image was processedin grayscale to reveal more details. Color full sized image you can see here.

Negative image for resolving faint structures and stars. Some objects are labeled.

Here are some results achieved by various post-processing. As source were used 3 (RGB) FIT images exported by K3CCDTools. FIT images were combined to color image. Then Flatten Background command was used (because no flat fields were applied in K3CCDTools). After that the image was converted to grayscale and further processed by MaximDL or Corel PhotoPaint.
Corel PhotoPaint (Gaussian Blur, Adjust ToneCurve, Unsharp Mask)	Negative of the left image
MaximDL (Histogram Levels), Corel PhotoPaint (ToneCurve, Unsharp Mask)	Negative of the left image
Corel PhotoPaint (Gaussian Blur, AutoEqualize, Unsharp Mask)	Negative of the left image
The photo from Digitized Sky Survey (hypernova SN2002ap is not present here) Click the image to see the full size.	Negative of the left image

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Last Update: 14.11.2001