M 51 with GSO 300 mm newt.

[Luis Campos]

Hi all,

Yesterday I went to my favorite dark (ish) site armed with my GSO 300 mm newt. and Canon 350D.

Although the sky conditions were not ideal (poor transparency and very high turbulence) I managed to take 13x5 min. exposures of M 51...then the fog rolled in...

well, here goes the result, hope you like it:

Cheers,

Luís

[dave wilcox]

Fantastic picture Luis

[callisto]

Exellent image

[Steve 1962]

hope you like it:

I do! That's a lovely shot

[MikeD]

Great stuff.

Mike.

[stan26]

That's an awesome image, great effort Luis, possibly the best DSLR M51 attempt I have seen!

Stan

[stan26]

That's an awesome image, great effort Luis, One of the best M51 DSLR attempts I have seen!

Stan

[Woolleson]

Totally awe inspiring! A fabulous image.........

Thanks for sharing

[Doug]

Hi Luis

that is a awesome image well done

[Luis Campos]

Thank you all for your kind words

I wish that the transparency was better, it's a shame....when i'm at home imaging in suburban skies I get some really great crystal clear skies, although limited by PL, when out on the field when it's supposed to go deep i'm getting lousy sky ( Murphy law...)

I tried to pull out the dimmer shell of the galaxy but there wasn't enough signal, still quite pleased with this result

Best wishes,

Luís

[Chris]

Wow you've got m51 really pinging out the image and really nice detail! I had another crack at m51 last night as its so well placed at the moment, I will be happy if its 1/10 as good as yours, fantastic job!

[Anweniel]

That is a beautiful image of M51. This was meant to be my target for this evening, sadly the expected ~5% cloud cover turned out to be more like 99.999997%

I love that you have captured some detail too on maybe half a dozen other fuzzies

[Sam]

The colour is fantastic! M51 is my favourite galaxy, it shows such spectacular detail.

[Luis Campos]

Thank you all

I still have another galaxy to process from the sama night (NGC 2903) but the guiding was all over the place ...let's see what i can extract from that.

Cheers,

Luís

[RikM]

That's a wonderful image Luis. What ISO did you use? My images always seem to have so much more noise than this even after 30-40 subs.

[Luis Campos]

That's a wonderful image Luis. What ISO did you use? My images always seem to have so much more noise than this even after 30-40 subs.

Hi Rik,

Usually I never go for more than 400 ISO, that's the case here, and it's only 13 subs.

By the experiences I've been doing I'd say that 200 to 400 ISO is the sweet spot as you end up with much better star colors and a tad better dinamic range, lower noise and cleaner final image.

Let me tell you, when I choose the telescope to go with the 350D I had this in mind, a large aperture and fast F/ ratio exactly because of this, I have now a Alatir Astro 200 mm f/4 imaging newt. and this beast (GSO 300 mm f/5 newt.) that I use mainly for planetary imaging...sometimes I take it for a ride on deep sky

Cheers,

Luís

[Quatermass]

Thats a cool M51 :D

[Luke]

I like your colours and the smoothness Luis, wow, only 13 subs!

[tollytastic1]

I just love the colour, Well Done!!!!

Paul

[cloudbuster]

Nice one Luis...and with a DLSR too!

[Tom OD]

Thats a hell of a lot of data for 65mins especially at ISO400. Great job, on the colour and detail.

Tom

[Zul]

Stunning image!!

[Coco]

Beautiful...