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M101 reprocess with loads of extra data.

RobH

By RobH
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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RobH

RobH

Posted
Posted

Hello folks,

Like most of us poor slaves to a cloudless sky, I've not been getting out under the stars much recently so it seemed like a good time to finish off a couple of projects.

M101, The 'Pinwheel Galaxy',a type Sc spiral at a distance of 27 million light years, was discovered by Pierre Mechan on the 27th March 1781.

227 years and 11 days later I decided to have a crack at imaging it.

This is a complete rework of my earlier M101, which I posted in April, using data from early April plus nearly 3 1/2 hours of extra luminance data from the end of the month.

When I posted my first attempt at this, I'd only got 45 minutes of luminance subs to use, and consequently, by the time I'd stretched the data, the image was pretty noisy.

Consequently, I rather overgenerously smoothed the image and succeeded in reducing the noise, but lost a lot of faint detail in the process :D

This bugged the hell out of me to the point that I just had to go and get more luminance frames :D

This is the result....no smoothing needed!

Image taken with a fork mounted 14 inch LX200 GPS @ F6.3 with an Atik 16HR and Astronomik filters, Tal 100R @ f10/DSI Pro/PHD guiding

Acquired with MaXIM DL, processed in Photoshop CS2.

Luminance. 15 x 3 minutes (April 7th & 8th), 51 x 4 minutes (April 28th)

Total luminance - 4 hrs 9 minutes.

Red. 20 x 3 minutes binned 2x2.

Green. 15 x 3 minutes binned 2x2.

Blue. 16 x 200 seconds binned 2x2.

Total integration time. 6 hrs 47 minutes & 20 seconds.

1st image full size, second reduced for easier viewing.

Hope you like it :)

Cheers

Rob

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bazza

bazza

Posted
Posted

Rob, without doubt this is up there with the best.

Seriously good image.

You google M101 mate - you won't find too many better.

If Simon Cowell was into astro imaging - you'd have a contract by now!

Barry.

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barkis

barkis

Posted
Posted

Without doubt one of the finest Galaxy images I have seen from an amateur.

I hesitated when using the description amateur, because it somehow didn't seem to sit easy with this kind of quality. But of course I quickly recalled all the other images I have seen on here, where the same hesitancy would apply. It's just so fascinating to know that the gap between Pro. and Am. has ceased to be.

Ron.

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saturn5

saturn5

Posted
Posted

Seeing stunning images like this and the many others posted on this forum are an inspiration to me and set a target of what can be achieved when you have the required knowledge and skill.

I'm looking forward to the Autumn and darker nights with more anticipation than ever before so i can at long last get into astrophotography seriously(i hope) :D

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