Another 1st M101 Pinwheel

[Notty]

To square off a couple of threads I started and thanks to all who helped me with my guiding issues, flats and dust bunnies! The result is an image I'm pleased with for the effort over the last 3 nights and days...90% of which was technical fault finding and only 25 mins of actual rubber-to-the-road exposing a camera to a DSO but there you go. Btw this was also my first time using Astrotortilla (thanks again Louise) and it is an absolute Godsend and I would recommend it to anyone.

My wife will seriously lose it with me if I pull another late one tonight even though that's 4 clear sky nights in a row unheard of. I was hoping to go try and get more data but is it diminishing returns on an object so small with a colour DSLR?

Anyway I'd also been playing with Astroart which I hoped to use as my one-stop-shop but the stacking results were much nicer from DSS so apart from importing the final result into AA and tweaking with the "visualisation" (not sure what it even means) I've done no more processing on it. At this scale any sharpening type exercise seems to just make more noise, so here it is as is, bunnies mostly gone cropped then full screen. 5 x 5 min subs, darks, flats and bias. (Next thing to learn: Dark flats?!)

Thanks again everyone for your help on this, it's why SGL is such a great place. Look forward to one day knowing enough to help others.

[Ouroboros]

I think you should be very pleased with that image. I bet you've learnt a hell of a lot doing it.  

Sorry, I missed the earlier threads ... what camera and telescope? 

[Notty]

Why thank you very much, yes it's all constant learning indeed. Scope was the ED80 with the modded DSLR.

[Marky1973]

Thats excellent for just 25 minutes, very jealous... I'm gonna have to have a go now....

[DrRobin]

Nice one, very pleasing image. M101 is one of my favourite objects and it is well placed at the moment, even if it isn't dark for very long. Are you still having a go at solar Ha?

Robin

[Notty]

Hello Robin! Hope you're well. Yes I'm going to have another crack at the Ha very soon. Before I leave this Earth I WILL work out how to consistently get mosaics from my TAL PST (or win the lottery and get a Quark!)

[lensman57]

Very good 1st attempt, well done.

A.G

[stevewanstall]

Great image, I would be very satisfied if I had such success!