Galactic Flux - How to pick it up?

[iksose7]

A couple of weeks ago i aimed my new lens at M81+M82 and had around 30 minutes of imaging time before sunrise started to effect subs. I wan not expecting much, i just wanted to test the lens. Tonight is going to be the clearest and conditions we have had here in a while now and i will be re-visiting the duo.

Has anybody got any tips on how to pick up some of that flux nebula that dominates this region? I will be using a Canon 1100D and a EF200L. I have seen a fantastic image of this area with this lens but it totaled in at around 17 hours worth of exposure.

Is that what i need, plenty of hours? A high ISO? Longer subs? Or do i need a better camera? Any help would be great!

Cheers

[swag72]

I did an image of M81 M82 where I was after the flux specifically. A couple of thoughts from that experience.

1 . Dark skies are a great advatnage

2 . My luminance subs were at a fairly quick f4.7 and they were 30 minutes each. They picked up the faintest whiff of it and I had over 17 hours worth of subs. I was aiming for 30 hours solely of luminance, but life's not always like that!

3 . Absolutely no moon at all, the signal is very weak without being drowned out by anything else.

Above all, good luck!!! It was hard to get the data and even harder to process. Olly was responsible for turning my data into a reasonable picture. It was very much a challenge.

[iksose7]

Awww, i have no chance then. I have dark skies but i think the longest sub i could manage right now on the Astrotrac is 4 minutes. Although i do have the power of f2.8.

Just had a look at your image, looks awesome. Almost 30 hours! Were you shooting from a dark site?

[swag72]

My site isn't as dark as I like to think!! I'd say it's a rural ish sky on the Bortle scale that I've seen on Wikipedia. I can faintly see the Milky Way on a good night and M31 if very lucky.

[iksose7]

Oh well, i would say my skies are a class 2 on that scale. May aswell have a go anyways just to see what i can get.

[Pete Presland]

do the longest subs you can you should get a nice image of M81 and M82 if you manages to get more it will be a bonus, i am sure there was an image on here recently that caught some with quite a short exposure

[iksose7]

i am sure there was an image on here recently that caught some with quite a short exposure

Cheers Pete, thats given me a bit of hope