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Description

M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy revisited

Captured on March the 29nd and 30nd

Wow, what a long night!

Starting at 19:50, I began to setup my equipment for imaging M101 again.

My first visit was exactly two weeks ago (www.deviantart.com/archonom/ar… ), when the bright Moon light and some thin clouds prevented me from getting more details out of this object.

But last night, the conditions were perfect for deep sky imaging (if you ignore the fact that I live in an inner city).

The captured beauty is called Pinwheel Galaxy (Messier 101) and is distanced 21 Million light years away from us.

At the middle left of the picture, the distant galaxy NGC 5477 can be seen.

After one hour of setting up everything, the imaging session began: From 20:50 until 02:30 the Newton tubus was directly targeted at the Pinwheel Galaxy. Most unfortunately, the first batch of images was too bright, blurring the final image composition. This is why only 61 out of 86 images were used for stacking.

Some say, that M101 should only be captured if one has access to a very dark sky. However, I still like the outcome, knowing that I still have much to learn and need to practice more so even better results can be achieved.

If you take a closer look at the image above, you will notice the brighter red areas. They represent very active star forge regions with about 10 million solar masses each.

Data:

- 86x220s

- 61 light frames used
- ISO 800

Equipment used:

- 8' Newton

- EQ6 R Pro

- Canon 1200 DA

Editing:

- Stacking with Sequator

- Stretching with Fitswork

- Some additional color balancing etc.

- Final image is cropped

Time invested:

- 6,5 hours telescope session
- 4-6 hours of image selection, stacking and editing

Description

M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy revisited

Captured on March the 29nd and 30nd

Wow, what a long night!

Starting at 19:50, I began to setup my equipment for imaging M101 again.

My first visit was exactly two weeks ago (www.deviantart.com/archonom/ar… ), when the bright Moon light and some thin clouds prevented me from getting more details out of this object.

But last night, the conditions were perfect for deep sky imaging (if you ignore the fact that I live in an inner city).

The captured beauty is called Pinwheel Galaxy (Messier 101) and is distanced 21 Million light years away from us.

At the middle left of the picture, the distant galaxy NGC 5477 can be seen.

After one hour of setting up everything, the imaging session began: From 20:50 until 02:30 the Newton tubus was directly targeted at the Pinwheel Galaxy. Most unfortunately, the first batch of images was too bright, blurring the final image composition. This is why only 61 out of 86 images were used for stacking.

Some say, that M101 should only be captured if one has access to a very dark sky. However, I still like the outcome, knowing that I still have much to learn and need to practice more so even better results can be achieved.

If you take a closer look at the image above, you will notice the brighter red areas. They represent very active star forge regions with about 10 million solar masses each.

Data:

- 86x220s

- 61 light frames used
- ISO 800

Equipment used:

- 8' Newton

- EQ6 R Pro

- Canon 1200 DA

Editing:

- Stacking with Sequator

- Stretching with Fitswork

- Some additional color balancing etc.

- Final image is cropped

Time invested:

- 6,5 hours telescope session
- 4-6 hours of image selection, stacking and editing