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First real attempt at M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy


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Saturday night was really clear and still, my EL panel had arrived from the states (for only £50). I wanted to give it a try on something so I set up and spent around 1hr imaging M51. This is the result with an Atik 315L+ and a Sky Watcher LP filter. I'm still waiting on a filter wheel and filters before I venture into colour and I need to be able to walk before I run ;) This has only been processed with Nebulosity 4 and so has not been messed around with too much although I did have to stretch the image a bit more than I was happy with. My PA and consequently tracking was a little hence the slightly egg shaped stars. A problem that I have been battling for a while and I am starting to make progress in. But I only intended to try the panel out, hence not fine tuning the alignment more, but got better results than I thought I would. With better PA and more time I can see how I will get far better results though.

M51

Its the first deep space image that I have captured that I am reasonably pleased with so I thought I would brave it and put it before an audience with more knowledge than just my friends. So let me know what you think.

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Your image is very good. I'm having a hard time even finding M51.

Many thanks! That's the advantage of a go to telescope it does make finding things a lot easier. However when I have looked for things manually I tend to use a wide angle eye piece and 'Star Hop' to get in the general location and then center the object as best as possible. Then drop the camera in, if you have a parfocal ring for the eyepiece then you should be very close in focus and have something in view. From there you can then fine tune the composition. I was lucky with this one and the go to slewed to exactly what you can see there. I touched nothing to compose it as I liked the composition. I just selected a star, started auto-guiding, let that settle down and the started imaging. I only wish I had had more time to get more data, as I'm just starting to get traced of IC 4277 and IC 4278 coming through.

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Nice image! Better than my first try, taken on Sunday night. I used  a 8" Newtonian on a Celestron CG5-GT with a Nikon D5300. No guide scope , so 20 x 30 second exposures. It is only about the fourth time I have used the scope; it was the first time I had followed the two star alignment with some calibration stars. I wondered if the GOTO was any better than the dismal three earlier attempts. So, I put in M51 - There it was, middle of the FOV! 

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy

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Nice image! Better than my first try, taken on Sunday night. I used  a 8" Newtonian on a Celestron CG5-GT with a Nikon D5300. No guide scope , so 20 x 30 second exposures. It is only about the fourth time I have used the scope; it was the first time I had followed the two star alignment with some calibration stars. I wondered if the GOTO was any better than the dismal three earlier attempts. So, I put in M51 - There it was, middle of the FOV! 

Still a nice image though considering you only have 10 minutes worth of data. BTW, Don't take the title as meaning this was my first ever attempt at deep space AP. This was the first attempt that I have made having done a lot of learning experimentation. This was my first attempt at trying to do a Deep Space image and applying all the knowledge (with a compromise of poor PA (time did not allow for drift alignment)) that I have gathered so far. 

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I think you've done very well. You could probably get it a little darker in Photoshop or gimp using curves tool. I expect the sky wasn't truly dark at this time of year. Certainly isn't here in Northumberland. Astro imaging is a never ending learning curve and you will get even better images as you experience and gear improves, but for now that's a great start.

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HI all, 

Nice pics. So I took my first image of M51 on friday night, my second ever galaxy  And although it's  not as good as  the  images above  I'm very pleased with it. In fact I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do much better with my kit. I’m sort of hoping that someone will  tell me that I’m wrong and whilst it will sting a little to be told that I could do better, at the end of the day I will learn things and improve. 

So, I live on a terraced street in London. I have a 130/650 skywatcher newt on an standard AZ goto mount. My camera is a point grey chameleon 3 with the new 818 sony sensor.

To take this photograph I had to climb up a ladder onto the roof above my daughters’ bedroom. (much to the amusement of the Friday night revelers in the garden  opposite).

I took about 100 30” exposures. Only 50% of them were any good. I also tried to get some colour into the shot by taking a few shots on my EOS 1000d but it wasn’t up to it and the colour is frankly a bit pants, but the luminance channel from the point grey is great (well I think its great anyway)

I didn’t use a light pollution filter because the wind seemed to have made the night sky clearer than usual – when I say clear I’m still talking about London, it was not clear by any other standard!

So I think, bar heading for dark skies or buying a descent mount, I’ve gone about as far as I can go. I'd be grateful if someone could tell me why I’m wrong.

And its great to see others getting this galaxy for the first time too. Any thoughts on the next target?

rory

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Another fine image and to honest I can't see that you'd get much better without better kit. About a month of fairly poor skies now but late July onwards you should be back in business. Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies might be worth a try in late summer possibly with the dslr for the former. M13 in Hercules is high now. Clear skies.

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Awesome picture!! Looks great :) Keep 'em coming mate!

Cheers! I still have a lot to learn. I had to stretch the data quite a bit to reveal the fainter detail, which resulted in me blowing out the cores of the galaxies, but I'm still happy with the result. As Geordie mc quite rightly pointed out the background is not very dark, and that is something that I will be working on to improve. The opportunities for doing any imaging are limited at the moment, so I suspect it will be a while before I get another opportunity to have a go at another target.  

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