M81 & M82

[Digz]

Ok so the second night of imaging and I think its proven that my double cluster wasn't a fluke......

Last night I targeted M81 and M82 but only for a short run as I had to be up early this morning for work. Anyway below is the result of an hours worth of data in 10min subs. Focus was achieved with my home made Y mask.

6 x 10min exposure (10 taken in total, 4 discarded with trails etc)

Guided with finder guider and PHD

Nikon D7000, ISO1000

Skywatcher 250p DS on NEQ6 Pro

I havent taken any darks for these so that, combined with only an hours of data, means its quite noisy. Hopefully I can sort this out by taken some darks tonight as there is some highlevel cloud at the moment meaning imaging is probably a no-go.

Anyway, hope you like.

[sergeC14]

No darks?

well, the result is awsome. mainbe just apply a despeckle noise reduction, and the image will be truly mind blowing.

supeb

Serge

[Digz]

Thank you serge. I hope to add some darks at some point but I'll check out a despeckle filter in PS in the meantime.

[Bob Andersson]

Hi Lee.

[Digz]

Hey Bob, glad to see you here :-)

[Jessun]

Very elegant! Nice background too, well controlled! Perhaps a sat trail lower right?

[Digz]

Hi Jesper, thanks for the comments. Never noticed the 'trail' you might be right. I'll take a look at the individual subs later and see where it appears.

One thing that did come to mind is having lost 4 x 10 min subs was a big chunk of data, whereas if I had limited subs to, say, 5 mins I would have lost as much data.

[angusb1]

Very nice, looks like the Y mask did the job, focus is spot on