M94 - Cat's Eye Galaxy

Yes, it's a shame about the outer ring. I suspect two things: 1) the filter—Oleg Novoselov had the same issue with this galaxy using the same filter. And second, I think the exposure doesn't match the light pollution level well. But I can't rule out my own mistakes either. It's probably a combination of all these factors. If you're interested, I can share the raw file—maybe something can be salvaged from it.

I can give it a try. I don't have a PixInsight license, so that makes it doubly interesting. Send me a link to Yandex Disk if you can, I'll try it out in the coming days. And what's your name, by the way? So we can get acquainted.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11s3r8TIC60eramyzSzeaSbELFY4lS3nI/view?usp=drive_link
Pavel, nice to meet you.

Likewise, Alexey.

Pavel, unfortunately, the ring just doesn't stretch out. It's simply not there in the original stack, and there are clearly two reasons for this. First, it's definitely the filter. For this camera (I have the same one), I use a regular IR CUT filter. Second, yes, gain 120 is optimal, but the exposure should be at least 3 to 5 minutes (good guiding is needed). There's also a third possibility: heavy skyglow, but I doubt that's it. The ring should have shown up anyway—14 hours is a huge total exposure. Give me your email, I'll send you my M94 stack so you can see. Everything is clear there right away, and also what I tried while attempting to stretch your ring. And let's subscribe to each other.

I completely agree. I've added plans for about 6 hours of shooting through Irkutsk to the imaging schedule. I think the final result should turn out pretty well, but I doubt the mount can handle such long exposures—the 200 Newton is a bit too large for it, and the pixel size is small too. It's better to write in Telegram: https://t.me/Le_Gushqua