processed NGC 2903 in colour

Processed Leo galaxy NGC 2903 in full colour, a Finest NGC target. Captured this data back om 29 Jan '17. And 2 days after that I tried to put it together. I guess I wasn't happy with the results then.

Tonight, I'm happy with the result...

FITS Liberator 4, Photoshop CS2. Luminance 60x10, RGB 60x5.

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Did you catch that?

FITS Liberator version 4.

Somehow I missed the announcement or notification of the upgrade but in the summer of 2021 the image processor and converter was upgraded from version 3 to 4.

I wanted to give it a try. I put the previously downloaded EXE onto a loaner i5 laptop with Win 10 64-bit and installed it without difficult. After some acclimation (I'll discuss this in a separate post), I had my TIFF images ready to go. Via the NAS, I transferred the files back to John Max and fired up Photoshop.

First cut showed two bad and opposing gradients. Is that what put me off the first time?

Created a synthetic gradient for red and removed it. Same for blue. Then did all the normal stuff, registration, cropping, etc. Nice, flat this time.

Boosted the colours and used a layer mask (first time?) to pump up the region around the galaxy. Those two huge extended spiral arms are quite something.

Still needs a bit of work, a better crop, and there's a bit of a red cast.