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It's been a long time since I've shot this one At least 15 years. So I decided to have another go at it the other night.

I had guiding issues that caused me to dump half my images. I'm sure there's better processing to be done on this and can provide the raw Fits From APP or the XISF from Pixinsight if anyone is willing to give it try.
Rough processing of M51- The Whirlpool galaxy

Pentax K-1 and Explore Scientific 127mm ED
30x180s
ISO 400
Losmandy G-11
Initial calibration and integration in Astro Pixel Processor. Final processing in Photoshop & Topaz Denoise AI.

That looks pretty amazing!!

Though it does look like the output of a monochrome ccd??

Unfortunately my trial license of PI expired and i havent purchassd it yet... mainly as i have no new content

But wow Craig that really is impressive

Here's a bit of reprocessed version

That's a nice result, but I;m unsure about the blotchyness on top of M51. Could that be something in your optical train?

I think it is some dust on the sensor. But that's tough to clone out.

Now this is looking much more rich in color!

Kudos bro

I need to make it out to shoot this object some now that it isn't in the trees where I go. With 90 minutes it is looking pretty good with more reach than my 400.LIke me it was probably pushed a bit much in post processing as the background is starting to show some noise/blotchiness but that allowed you to relly bring out some detail in M51. I had some clear nights this weekend but it was nothing but wind here (35-45mph gusts) so all I did was go scout a location for a moon shot I want to attempt.

I shot this from my front yard (Bortle 5 skies) I'm sure there's problems with my processing, and if you or anyone else wants to take a crack at it I'm more than happy to supply you with whatever files you desire from the DNGs to the stacked unstretched FITS/xsif files from APP or Pixinsight.

I have Siril and Star Tools that I need to try and learn to process it with..

Nice one! Were you dithering? I have a hard time spotting walking noise but I thought I saw it in the first version -- bringing the black point up a bit seems to have controlled it better in subsequent ones.

Looks as if there might be an uncorrected dust-bunny at about 1 o'clock. Or else I missed some nebulosity the last time I did M51. :-)

Also, did you do a star color calibration in APP? Even with that, my colors seem to come out all over the map depending on which filter's output had the most thrown-out subs. That's one argument for using the K-5 instead of the mono and filters, the color has less chance to get honked by me. My M51's color palette is a lot warmer but I certainly can't claim that's "right", and it's an artistic choice anyway. Your bigger scope (or better technique, or both) yields a lot more detail in the arms' dust lanes than I was able to capture, that's for sure.

That would be nice to have. My backyard/park behind the house is a bortle 8 so I only dork around with bright things there testing out new to me stuff or shoo the moon.

No, I didn't dither on this one since the shutter release cable I was using some how had the pin break off in the camera so I had to resort to an external intervalometer. I've ordered another one and it should arrive this weekend.

Yeah, there's a dust bunny (and I just cleaned my sensor <GRRRRR> Here's one with the dust removed.

I did do Star color calibration in APP and then used Astronomy Tools actions in Photoshop to increase star colors. But I think overstretching it wiped out a lot of the star colors. I might try MossyRock's Rawtherapee processing workflow on this and see if I get better results.