M101 - Unmodified DSLR

[frugal]

The weather forecast promised 3 clear nights, but only one turned up. Due to getting back late from London; the laptop giving me the BSoD and refusing to recognise the USB hub; and Astrotortilla and BYEOS refusing to play nicely together it was 1am by the time I managed to start imaging. Fortunately I did not have to go into work the following day, so I kept imaging until it started to get light (boy am I suffering for it today )

M101 with an ED80 and an unmodified Canon 60D. 7x300s and 17x600s (when I was confident that the guiding was working OK, and the skies were dark enough I upped the exposure time).

There was obviously something a little off as there is a large spread around the brighter stars, I am fairly confident that the focus was OK as I check with the Bahtinov mask and it looked good. I think that there might have been poor seeing or high level vapor in the atmosphere. Or it might just have been that I have had to crop the image more than usual, so the stars appear to be bigger.

Although, I had just found a version I did a year ago and my expectations have obviously changed over the past 12 months as the new version is a lot better than the version from last year: 

[carastro]

Good work

[Zadoq]

Nice image. Well done. We're on M101 too at the moment...

It's true that in 12 months, a lot of experience can be gained. We started imaging about 13 months ago and there is a big difference with images back then and what is done now

[wxsatuser]

Can just start to see the faint outer arms, well done.

[Christopher Davenport]

Nice going, I like what you have achieved.

It is nice and crunchy!

[fielderda]

Excellent image!!

What was your ISO?

[MarsG76]

definitely a massive improvement over last year.. nicely done.

[toxic]

thats nice well done