M51 still trying.

[MikeD]

Hi all.

Bit of a mixed night last night.

I got out at around 8.30pm to beautiful clear dark skies LP hardly showing at all.

As I was already setup to image with the SLR lens and HX916 guided with the 80ed, I thought I would have a pop at Markarian's chain. only to find it too low in the sky and still hiding behind the obs wall.

No problem I though I'll go for the Leo trio. So I zipped over and took a 30 second test shot, it was small and with it being such a good clear night it would be a shame to miss the opportunity to get some high res detail...........Sod it I thought, and started to break the setup down and put the 10" newt back on the mount

with the 80ed.

About 40 minutes later the 10" and 80ed where set up on the mount and aligned to each other and cameras moved and re focused................ just in time for a large bank of cloud to move in from nowhere.

Not to be beaten I waited it out for another hour and a half and was rewarded with clearing skies at around 11.30pm, but not the same quality skies from earlier, the LP was back and cloud was comming and going.

The result was 24 @ 5 Min's usable luminance subs from 34 taken due to cloud.

The data collected was not the good quality data I was hoping for, so I decided to lump it in with last years M51 data ( which was also not the best data possible due to the weather again ) and use it as something to better with this years attempts at M51 if I ever get a good run of clean dark skies.

The image below is around 3.5 hours L ( 2 hrs from last night)

Ha 30 Min's in 7.5 subs bin x 2 ( last year)

R:G:B 25 Min's in 2.5 min subs bin x 2 ( last year)

Ha /R mix is 50/50

As a L-Ha/R-G-B image.

(click to enlarge)

The image has been cropped a lot as this years data was well off last years data in position and rotation.

Mike

[CELESCOPE]

Thats a beautiful well detailed image Mike , lovely Galaxy

Rog

[steppenwolf]

I like it and you have captured some detail in the star forming regions too which is not easy on this object!

[MartinB]

Last year's M51 was mighty impressive so goodness knows what it's going to look like when you have added a load more to it

[Vega]

Fantastic image already mate.

BTW ... spare a thought for us humble DSLR owners without CCD camera's while taking these lovely M51 snaps . It's not gonna stop me trying a semi-widefield with iccle M51 in the middle via my 400D though

Matt

[Beyond_Vision]

Well worth the effort Mike plenty of detail in the main spiral arms.

Regards

Kevin

[RobH]

Cracking shot Mike :hello1:

The Ha has really added nicely to the image and the colour is superb.

Cheers

Rob

[MikeD]

Cheers guys.

I hope to have a much more natural looking M51 by the end of this season, fingers crossed.

Mike.

[beamish]

Lovely capture there Mike.

[barkis]

Awesome pic. Mike.

Ron.

[markcol]

Lovely image of a fantastic subject Mike!

Mark

[zhgutas]

spectacular ! I can even easily make out the third, very small galaxy at the top

Marius

[MikeD]

Thanks again folks.

spectacular ! I can even easily make out the third, very small galaxy at the top

Marius

And the other one, below and to the left of the small edge on galaxy.

Mike.

[centroid]

That's 'growing' into one superb image Mike.

I'll continue to watch it grow, with great interest.

Dave