M51 with friends

[Xplode]

A few days ago i unmounted the 100Q and mounted the 8" f/5 newtonian to image some smaller objects.

I choose M51 and got almost 5 hours over 2 nights.

21x180" ISO1600 og 43x300" ISO1600 taken with 6Da.

Stacked and processed in Pixinsight, final touches in PS CS6.

Widefield with almost the whole FOV. There must be several hundred smaller galaxies here. 

Take note of the large cluster of faint galaxies near the bright star above M51.

100% crop, some hydrogen alpha areas as starting to show

Annotated image, would be nice to know the magnitude of the faintest objects here, anyone got any idea how i can find out?

[Martin Meredith]

Hi xplode

Lovely image.

The following might help to find individual mags  (zoom in for more details). Objects plotted down to mag 20. You might even have a quasar or two in there...

M51.pdf

cheers

Martin

[Scott]

as nice as the crop is, I just love that widefield. gives some sort of perspective with M51 floating out there on a sea of stars and galaxies, devouring her companion like a black widow spider. I'm also one of the rare bread that actually likes the diffraction spikes a newtonion give you.

very nice indeed

[Nicho]

I love the colour and detail you have brought out in M51. I too prefer the widerfield shot .

Nick

[Xplode]

Hi xplode

Lovely image.

The following might help to find individual mags  (zoom in for more details). Objects plotted down to mag 20. You might even have a quasar or two in there...

M51.pdf

cheers

Martin

Thank you.

Looks like the galaxy cluster near HIP 66004 is around 2.5 billion light years away

[Martin Meredith]

I think you've just caught a couple of quasars at the right hand edge with redshifts implying light travel times of 5-6 billion light years.

Its a lot of fun checking out what else is in an image as well as that big blue-yellow thing (mere 35 million light years) in the middle    

Martin

[csphd]

Great image!