Some DSOs under crystal clear skies

[RobertI]

A very transparent night after all the rain with good seeing revealing galaxies down to mag 18, and all the equipment just seemed to WORK. Tried using the F3.3 reducer at a less aggressive F4.5 (rather than the previous F4.0) which seems to have improved the coma a lot, so very happy with that too.

M81, probably the best of the night:

M82, looking forward to trying some Ha on this:

M109 framed to get some of the fainter neighbours:

M108:

M97, ghostly and fainter than I expected:

Hope you like 'em

Rob

[HiloDon]

Excellent, Rob! I still have a soft spot for the mono. I find the same thing with the .33 focal reducers. It's even more problematic with the Ultrastar.

Did you use the non linear scaling on M81? It really shows some nice structure.

Don

[Astrojedi]

Excellent captures... Looks like you had a really clear night. The detail on M81 is very good.

The Owl (M97) is much harder to capture than one would think due to the very low surface brightness. This is one I always struggle to bring detail out while observing.

[laudropb]

Very nice set of images.

[RobertI]

Thanks for the comments and likes.

Don - yes I used the Arcsinh scaling on M81 which seemed smooth the high dynamic range nicely.

Hiten - yes I should have tried 45 - 60 secs on M97 and some other fainter objects I viewed (see below), though I find it a bit of a pain doing different exposure lengths during a session and messing about with different master darks. I just like to slew and go!

[RobertI]

Some other less impressive objects viewed during last night's session:

Coddington's Nebula (IC2574) - I assumed as it had a name it would be spectacular...sadly it was very faint, but some interesting detail:

NGC4041 (left) & 4036 - An interesting galaxy pair separated by 470,000 light years, NGC4041 is a pretty face on spiral:

Rob

[Paul81]

Superb session Rob, M81 is a real gem, there is some lovely detail in the spiral arms!

I am going to switch over to using a different reducer on my RC6 - I have an Astro Physics CCDT67 0.67x reducer. I need to get some spacers but want to get it going with a filter wheel and push it to maybe 0.5x.

[Astrojedi]

Coddington's Nebula is a really hard one... great result... really enjoying your captures...

[RobertI]

Superb session Rob, M81 is a real gem, there is some lovely detail in the spiral arms!

I am going to switch over to using a different reducer on my RC6 - I have an Astro Physics CCDT67 0.67x reducer. I need to get some spacers but want to get it going with a filter wheel and push it to maybe 0.5x.

Thanks Paul, yes I understabd the CCDT67 is supposed to be well matched to the RC's - I'd be interested to see how far you can push it, if you can get it to 0.5 you are nearly matching my F3.3 reducer which only seems to work at F4.5 or greater with my RC. I am also looking to get a filter wheel (I have a few questions on this which I'll post in due course) to give multispectral a go.

[aparker]

Beautiful work - you really had some great skies.  The M81 shot is especially nice.