M51 revisited

[Robfal]

I love my new mount. This one has a total exposure time of 33min in 25 subs. Curves and levels in Photoshop

Comments guys

Rob

[geppetto]

Lovely M51 Rob

Might even be more in that one to tweak out

[MikeD]

A very nice job, a very natural looking image.

[MartinB]

Lovely Rob. Tight round stars and dust lanes showing up. The brighter areas would stand a tiny bit of sharpening imho but then it might not look quite as natural. What set up are you using?

[Robfal]

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Martin Kit used

Startravel 120 refractor

EQ6 Pro Mount (I love this)

HX516 camera used unguided

With this setup I can get up to 2 mins subs if I'm really lucky but most are 30-60sec. With guiding however (more toys!!!) My next purchase is going to be another scope (ed80) whilst I would also like to swop the Startravel for a 8" SCT or similar. Then my setup would be getting somewhere near

I will have another play with the processing (sharpening) just read aninteresting article in PA on this. If I get any real improvement I'll post again

Rob

[centroid]

That's a nice image Rob.

Looking at the SNR of the picture, as has already been suggested, there is likely some motre detail to be extracted from it.

With a good SNR like that, you can afford to be a bit more aggressive with the processing, perhaps a bit of 'unsharp maskimg'.

Dave

[Akyra]

Whats that going on to left just down a bit from the middle? Its a sort of trail but not constant...

[CELESCOPE]

great work Rob , centre core looks good as well , nice smooth image there mate

Rog

[MartinB]

Whats that going on to left just down a bit from the middle? Its a sort of trail but not constant...

I think you are looking at the bridge of nebulosity between the 2 galaxies.