My first complete image I'm reasonably happy with. Bode's Nebulae M81 M82 and NGC3077

[rharrison]

I find M82 a fascinating target, an incredibly active galaxy, the polar bursts look amazing in Hydrogen Alpha and I've managed the record a lot of red data in that area with my camera. Unfortunately no new supernova ! Apparently all this 'starburst' activity is due to immanent collision with M81.

This image is around 19hrs total exposure with a modest setup by the standards of this forum. A finder guided Vixen GP2, a cheap 102mm Bresser refractor F6 lots of CA and a Canon 1200d unmodified with a 2" Baader light pollution filter and Skywatcher field flattener.

A range of exposures some of the early subs were 1min unguided, the later ones 300secs when there was no moon, all taken from my heavily light polluted garden in the center of Southend over the last few months.

I used Bias and Flat frames, no darks as I'm of the opinion they're almost pointless unless you can control the sensor temperature,

My enthusiasm for the challenge of Astrophotography is growing! and I've since upgraded to an NEQ6 and a Vixen ED81.

[xtreemchaos]

nice work mate,amazing ld be well happy with a pic like that.keep up the good work.thanks for sharing.

[sammak127]

brilliant image and always heartening to see good astrophotography from light polluted areas (speaking as a londoner)

[rharrison]

nice work mate,amazing ld be well happy with a pic like that.keep up the good work.thanks for sharing.

Thanks looks like you've got a similar setup, I used the Eq5 motors, annoying when the clutches undo themselves.

[rharrison]

brilliant image and always heartening to see good astrophotography from light polluted areas (speaking as a londoner)

Thanks, yeah it's amazing what you can do from a built up area especially narrowband but that's a whole load more expense, I'm planning to stick with the DSLR for a while yet.

[Altais]

A very nice image!   I especially like the red colors on M82.

I'm not sure I agree that taking darks is pointless though, especially for 300 sec exposures. They do a great job of removing hot pixels. If you take them after the imaging session (while packing down for example), the sensor temperature should be fairly constant. And slight differences in sensor temperature probably won't affect the result all that much.

[toxic]

yip very nice image